Harvey with a pole to measure elephant shoulder height. First a photo was taken of the elephant and then when it moved away a second photo was taken of the pole

Originally, with a couple of tents pitched on the other side of the Ol Tukai Orok woodlands opposite the current ATE elephant research camp, Cynthia and I would use every chance to take off from our day jobs to get to know the wonderfully confiding Amboseli elephants. She was working for the African Wildlife Foundation; I was lecturing in zoology at the University of Nairobi. At first, we used our respective Rohos (the boxy, tinny Renault 4) as light, front-wheel drive field vehicles, small and agile enough to drive under a big bull. 

One of the famous Renault 4s, known as a Roho, meaning heart or spirit in Kiswahili, with Filippa and Fifi of the FA family

Our original paper catalogue of black & white elephant ID photos, new names, and field notes — scribbled onto an 80-column IBM punch-card format for subsequent analysis — grew rapidly to become today the largest and longest genealogical and behavioural database of a free ranging African population of….one is supposed to say Very Large Herbivores, or charismatic mega-fauna, or some such clinical label. But the Amboseli elephants are more like family, a familiar clan of quirky, like-spirited neighbors.

Less than a decade into the project, with a growing family to feed and educate, like a newly mature bull I wandered off to find paying jobs to do elsewhere. But I’m pleased to report that the matriarch always accepted me back when I returned as a trustee to participate in the research activities, database management, scientific policy formulation, or often just as clerk-of-works. Co-editing with Cynthia and Phyllis Lee our big milestone volume, The Amboseli Elephants: A Long-Term Study of a Long-lived Mammal (U. of Chicago Press), a decade ago was a fitting if bittersweet send-off to my hands-on involvement in the project.

The hallmark of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project is longevity. Not just that Cynthia and I are in our 80s, but because the study is one of the longest in the world of a wild population of large-bodied, big-brained, long-lived herbivores--creatures, who share with us not only living space but the good, bad, and ugly of our life on earth: lineaments of compassion and companionship, conflict with our fellow inhabitants, and the deadly price of human greed.

We all leave trails through the habitats of our lifetime, some etched more deeply than others into the landscape. I’m proud and humbled to have joined Cynthia and our wonderful ATE colleagues on their path with the elephants through the Amboseli ecosystem. What the future holds, we can but hope.

Cynthia and Harvey at the 40th anniversary party for AERP

The Personhood of Animals and Nature: The Happy Case

by Betsy Swart

In 2018, the Nonhuman Rights Project sued the Bronx Zoo on behalf of Happy, an Asian elephant who has been in captivity at the Zoo for more than 40 years. They argued that Happy should be “considered an autonomous person” and, as such, be qualified for protections against imprisonment and the potential for her release to a sanctuary be considered.  On June 14, the Court denied this request, saying that, although she is “an intelligent being deserving proper care and compassion,” she is not being illegally held and cannot be considered a “person.”  In fact, no animal has been given personhood rights in the United States. 

Happy at the Bronx Zoo [photo credit: Reuters]

Despite this loss, the movement to grant “personhood” to nature is intriguing and advancing on many fronts. Beginning in the 1970’s with Christopher Stone’s famous article “Should Trees Have Standing,” a movement was launched to grant “legal personality” or “standing” to rivers, forests, or eco-systems. When an entity or an animal has “standing”, they have the right to bring action and/or be represented in court. The first successful case for the rights of nature (2011) involved the Vicabamba River in Ecuador, appealing for the river’s right to represent itself and its right to exist. The case was successful and resulted in victory over a project that would have done irretrievable damage to the river’s ecosystem. In 2018, the Supreme Court of Colombia issued a decision that protected the Amazon River’s ecosystem by recognizing its “rights and protection.” 

Work on behalf of individual animals has been more difficult. The Non-Human Rights Project, headed by Steven Wise, has attempted personhood cases on behalf of Tommy, Kiko, Hercules and Leo, all chimpanzees living in sub-standard captive conditions in the US. These cases, like Happy’s case have been lost. But it must be remembered that the future is often illuminated by the wisdom of “dissenting” opinions.  In the case of Happy, two dissenting judges, Jenny Rivera and Rowan D. Wilson. expressed powerful objections: “This is not just a loss for Happy, whose freedom was at stake. It is also a loss for everyone who cares about upholding and strengthening our most cherished values and principles of justice—autonomy, liberty, equality, and fairness—and ensuring that our legal system is free of arbitrary reasoning and that no one is denied basic rights simply because of who they are.” We at ATE, who have long seen elephants as “persons,” will continue to produce the science that undergirds this concept of “personhood” and will work tirelessly until dissenting opinions become majority ones—until elephants, other animals, and nature itself are given the dignity and “personhood” which may help save species, habitats, and the planet itself.   

To read the legal decisions on the Happy case Click Here. 

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