Happy, an elephant born in the wild in Asia in the early 1970s, was captured as a one-year-old in the early 1970s and flown to the United States. He has lived at the Bronx Zoo in New York for 45 years. Campaigns at the Nonhuman Rights Project argue that Happy deserved to be considered an individual and therefore illegally confined to the zoo. The zoo claims that it is neither an illegal prisoner nor a person. The question of whether basic human rights could be extended to an animal was raised in the New York Supreme Court, which ruled that Happy could not be considered a person unlawfully restricted to the zoo. The extension of Happy’s right to challenge its inclusion in a zoo “would have a huge destabilizing impact on modern society” and the granting of legal personality would affect the way people interact with animals, according to the state Court of Appeals majority. . The ruling upholds a lower court ruling and means the elephant will not be released into a more spacious shelter. He wrote: “Indeed, following his logical conclusion, such a designation would call into question the very conditions governing the ownership of pets, the use of service animals and the recruitment of animals into other forms of work.” Two of the seven appellants, Rowan Wilson and Jenny Rivera, wrote separate, strongly worded disagreements saying that the fact that Happy is an animal does not prevent her from having legal rights. Ms. Rivera wrote that Happy is being held in “an environment unnatural for her and that does not allow her to live her life”. He added: “Her captivity is inherently unjust and inhumane. It is an insult to a civilized society and every day she remains a captive – a spectacle for the people – and we reduce it.” The zoo and its supporters have warned that a victory for militants in the Nonhuman Rights Project could open the door to more legal action by animals, including pets, farm animals and other species at zoos.
