Introduction

Earlier chapters of this book have clearly outlined that wildlife are victimised by people in a multitude of ways. As repeated throughout, we suggest that this is in part able to happen and engrained in most societies because of wildlife's status. Wildlife can either belong to ‘no one’ or belong to ‘everyone’. They are likely the property of the state in either scenario. And, either way, their objectification – because of the speciesist nature of our society (Beirne, 2018) – enables them to be hunted or captured, usually within a set of regional or national regulations (Nurse, 2015). Once in the possession of an individual person, the wildlife shifts from being the property of the state to the property of that individual. Not all property, however, is equal. In particular, in many places the relationship between human and companion animals (who are also considered property) is governed by legislation that sets out guidelines for treatment of this kind of property and which often affords higher levels of protection to these nonhuman animals who are subject to direct human control. Similarly, ‘livestock’ or ‘production’ animals may be the subjects of welfare legislation that set out guidelines, which are likely less robust than those given to companion animals. Wildlife, who are outside the care of humans, may have some protection against hunting and trapping methods, which are deemed to cause suffering. Overall, however, even with welfare legislation, non-humans animals suffer and are exploited as we discuss in the next section.

In moving beyond the victimisation and exploitation that are perpetrated on wildlife, societies must create new relationships and legal structures to protect them. One way of approaching this is by granting some form of expanded rights for wildlife. We analyse how non-human animal rights are being expanded to include wildlife who are not companion animals. In this section, we include two case studies of legal cases in the US and Argentina, which are attempting to gain recognition for individual chimpanzees and orang-utans as legal persons, thus giving them rights. We critically consider these debates, arguing that under a lens of legal personhood, human exploitation of wildlife amounts to an infringement of certain rights.