The Fight for Equality with Animals

The Nonhuman Rights Project is an organization that is fighting for legal rights for species that are other than human. The project was founded in 2007 by Steven M. Wise, who has practiced animal protection law for 30 years,  and grew into a collaborative group of passionate individuals who work together to go against what is written in the law and fight for animals to be granted “personhood” starting with some of the most intelligent animals in the world such as chimpanzees, elephants and dolphins.

Being an intern at Earthscope gave me the pleasurable opportunity to interview Steven M. Wise over the phone. The questions I asked him were based more around the morality of the whole project and his recent struggle in receiving “personhood” for chimpanzees, which he is still fighting to achieve. During the interview, Mr. Wise stated that “There's a big difference between morality and law; sometimes they intersect and sometimes they have nothing to do with each other.” This statement stuck with me because of how realistic it was. Sadly morality doesn’t always play into the justice system–– a big reason I believe why animals currently still have no rights.

Steven M. Wise discussed how he believes and hopes that fighting for animal rights in New York will inspire other countries to do the same. “There are different ways that different countries view animals,” he said. Like Steven Wise said, all countries put different values on different animals which determines how they perceive those animals, sometimes even playing into religious beliefs and whether it's right or wrong to kill a certain animal. I wonder if this will cause issues for The Nonhuman Rights Project  later down the road in spreading animals rights to other countries.

The last question our team asked Steven Wise during the interview was whether or not he thought the world would be a better place if animals had rights. His answer was definitely one of the many highlights of the interview: “I think that giving appropriate rights to humans and nonhuman animals will lead to a better world just all the way around.” Hopefully the fight for animal rights in New York will pass and then spread to other states in the USA, and then hopefully worldwide. Let us fight as right bearing humans for the animals who do not have the capacity to to fight for themselves, and create a better world for everyone and all things.