shaky ground

In his article about the Ktunaxa Nation’s bid to stop a ski resort from being built on its territory (“Spirit of the Law,” April), Arno Kopecky shows that the trend to declare landscapes legal persons with “rights, powers, duties, and liabilities” seems to be catching on. But no one appears to have considered situations where non-human stresses cause irreparable damage. What are the rights and liabilities of New Zealand’s Whanganui River and Mount Taranaki, both sacred to the Māori, if the former floods and changes course, or the latter, a now quiescent volcano, erupts? The impulse to award rights to landscapes has overlooked the challenging issue of natural change. Antony Berger Wolfville, NS