The Constitution Court of Ecuador officially recognises animal legal rights in the country in a case regarding a former wild pet monkey that was seized by authorities.

In a world’s first, Ecuador has recognised the legal rights of wild animals in a landmark constitutional court ruling, which will see the creation of new legislation to protect their rights of animals. 

The ruling came as a result of a woolly monkey named Estrellita that forcibly moved from its home, where she was kept as a pet for 18 years after she was taken from the wild at one month old. Environmental authorities seized the monkey in 2019 on the grounds that possessing a “wild animal” is prohibited by Ecuador law and was moved to a zoo. Estrellita died a week after the relocation. 

The owner, librarian Ana Beatriz Burbano Proaño took legal action and in December 2021, the court ruled in favour of her, stating that the animal’s rights had been violated by the government after being forcibly removed. However in the same case, the constitutional court found that the animal’s rights were also violated by the original owner when it was removed from its natural habitat, especially at such a young age. 

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The Swaddle
By Saumya Kalia

In a landmark judgment, Ecuador, sitting in the Andean foothills, became the first country to recognize the legal rights of individual wild animals. This not only marks a remarkable development within the realms of environmental law, but is also the first to extend formal rights towards wild animals.

This is the story of a wild animal monkey named Estrellita. Estrellita was one when she was taken away from the forest illegally; for 18 years thereafter, she was kept as a pet and then taken to a zoo before she died. Her owner, meanwhile, filed a case for the country to recognize Estrellita’s rights, pleading that her removal from her natural habitat violated her dignity.

“The domestication and humanization of wild animals are phenomena that have a great impact on the maintenance of ecosystems and the balance of nature, as they cause the progressive decline of animal populations,” the court recognized in its ruling.

The verdict builds on a 2008 ruling that set a precedent to recognize nature in itself as a tangible legal entity; which by extension meant that people had a constitutional right to live in a healthy environment. The recent ruling then upholds that even individual animals can exercise this right to live in their natural habitats. The basis cited was such: the animal has a legal right by virtue of its own value, and not the value humans derive from the species.

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