Are they going to start arresting people for swatting away a mosquito?
Via Daily Camera:
Environmental activists and wildlife preservation advocates are a step closer to getting a “rights of nature” concept written into the Boulder County Comprehensive Plan.
Boulder County Planning Commission members agreed Wednesday night on a thus-far-unofficial comprehensive plan addition declaring county government’s responsibility to support the continued existence of all of the county’s “naturally occurring ecosystems and their native species populations.”
That statement, based on a proposal submitted by the Audubon Society of Boulder County, might not go far enough to satisfy some of the people who have been pushing for more than a year to have Boulder County declare that plants and animals have certain legal rights.
It doesn’t actually include the phrase “rights of nature,” for example.
It may still go too far, though, for some foes of the “rights of nature” movement, including people who warn that writing such a policy into an official government document would give plants and wildlife the same legal standing as human beings.
Planning commissioners heard from residents on both sides of the rights-of-nature controversy Wednesday night, when nearly 30 people spoke during a public hearing on the issue of whether such a concept should be included in the comprehensive plan.