Wildlife as property owners

Karen Bradshaw

Chapter 110 in Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Animal Law, 2025, pp 419-421 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Wildlife as property owners is a legal approach that extends the right to own property to the more-than-human world, including plants and animals. Wildlife property ownership is grounded in the observation that humans share the Earth with a rich array of other living creatures excluded from the human-created system of property law. Many cultures throughout time and history (including the present) understand animals, plants, and natural objects as co-equal participants in systems of law, government, and culture. Contemporary Western understandings of property ownership, however, traditionally recognized only humans as the owners of land, resources, chattel, and intellectual property—excluding the interests of nonhumans. Through colonization, Westernized exclusion of the more-than-human world from legal institutions and markets became widespread. Wildlife as property owners attempt to re-integrate the rights of plants and animals to use and own property, with a particularized—although not exclusive—focus on the land they live on and resources they rely on to survive. Wildlife property ownership is predicted to preserve natural habitats for the more-than-human world and thus slow biodiversity loss.

Keywords: Animal; Law; Animal rights; Property; Biodiversity loss; Ownership; Wildlife (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781803923666
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