with support from PALOC, UMR 208 (IRD, MNHN)
Contested spaces. Animals, Activists and the Law
Amphithéâtre de paléontologie
Galerie de paléontologie et d’anatomie comparée
Jardin des plantes, MNHN
2 rue Buffon, Paris 5
Recent decades have seen a growing, worldwide judicialisation of discussions concerning environmental issues, including debates over the legal status of animals, and their conservation. These arise in a variety of contexts. In some cases the effort is to contain feral species or vermin (like street dogs or rats), and in other cases to increase numbers in the wild (wolves, bison). In other cases (wild boar, beavers) particular species are being reintroduced in some parts of the world while simultaneously facing containment measures in others. Such processes may also be motivated by economic rather than ecological considerations (birds of prey or other predators).
Such debates are likely to involve a broad spectrum of protagonists, including professional lawyers and judges, perhaps acting on their own initiative through public interest litigation, politicians, state officials functioning at different levels, NGOs and individual activists, journalists, priests, and of course, land-owners and other representatives of vested interests who feel threatened by specific proposals. Activists themselves often display strong ideological and political differences regarding strategies for rewilding, reintroducing or conserving threatened or locally-extinct species. Consequently, such issues become matters of general public debate and can only be understood by taking into account their broad institutional, socio-cultural, political and legal contexts.