In another closely watched case, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, agreed in May to decide whether an elephant at the Bronx Zoo should get human-like rights and be moved to a sanctuary.Įarlier rulings dismissed the claims from the animal rights groups. have been unwilling to do so until now.Ī judge in Connecticut called a petition filed four years ago by an animal rights group to grant personhood to three elephants in a traveling petting zoo “wholly frivolous.” While animals have been granted legal rights in India, Pakistan and Argentina, courts in the U.S. We’re just asking that animals have the ability to enforce the rights that have already been given to them.” “This really is part of a bigger movement of advocating that animals’ interest be represented in court,” he said. Colombian veterinarian Gina Serna joins us at LX and gives us an inside scoop on her mission to sterilize and control Escobar’s wild hippos.Ĭhristopher Berry, the lead attorney for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, called it a narrow but profound ruling. Now the South American country is dealing with an invasion of the dangerous animal. In the 1980s, Escobar smuggled wild hippos into Colombia to join his reign of exotic animals and in the wake of his death they were left to fend for themselves. The Smithsonian Channel 's documentary "The Hunt for Escobar's Hippos" dives into an untold problem the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar left behind. They pointed to a federal statute that allows anyone who is an “interested person” in a foreign lawsuit to ask a federal court to permit them to take depositions in the U.S. Their attorneys argued that because advocates for the hippos can bring lawsuits to protect their interests in Colombia that the hippos should be allowed to be considered “interested persons” under U.S. The animal rights group based near San Francisco said it believes it’s the first time animals have been declared legal persons in the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati to give “interested persons” status to the hippos so that two wildlife experts in sterilization from Ohio could be deposed in the case.įederal magistrate Judge Karen Litkovitz in Cincinnati granted the request on Oct. In the suit, attorneys for the Animal Legal Defense Fund asked the U.S. A government agency has started sterilizing some of the hippos, but there is a debate on what are the safest methods. They are advocating for some of the animals to be killed. After his death in a 1993 shootout with authorities, the hippos were abandoned at the estate and left to thrive with no natural predators - their numbers have increased in the last eight years from 35 to somewhere between 65 and 80.Ī group of scientists has warned that the hippos pose a major threat to the area’s biodiversity and could lead to deadly encounters with humans. The “cocaine hippos” are descendants of animals that Escobar illegally imported to his Colombian ranch in the 1980s when he reigned over the country's drug trade. Pablo Escobar's Hippos Have Invaded Colombia's Waterways, Need to Be Culled: Study
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