Terrasse-vaudreul, a town in Quebec near Montreal, has become the first place in Canada to officially recognize trees as living beings with inherent legal rights.
- The Declaration: The town council signed the international Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Tree. The declaration dictates that trees possess fundamental rights, including “the right to life, to natural growth, to integrity and to regeneration.”
- Policy Changes: Terrasse-Vaudreuil is reviewing and amending its local bylaws . Moving forward, any development or construction project that requires cutting down a tree must ensure the tree is protected or properly replaced .
- Community Initiatives: Alongside the legislation, the town plans to implement active tree-planting programs and offer free trees for citizens to plant on private property.
- The Inspiration: The resolution was sparked by local filmmaker André Desrochers and backed by the International Observatory of Nature Rights, which advocates that trees are sentient, breathing entities that communicate via root system.
Yenny Vega Cardenas, president of the International Observatory of Nature Rights, says the declaration on tree rights is part of the same push that has seen some nations, such as New Zealand and Colombia, grant legal personhood to rivers and other natural areas.
It has previously happened in Canada, where Quebec’s Magpie river was granted legal rights by a regional government and the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit in 2021.
But Vega Cardenas says the tree declaration is special because it recognizes that a single tree is an ecosystem of its own, which can provide shade, food and habitat for other species.
“We need to understand that trees have dignity and they have senses,” she said. “Not sentiments, but senses … They can feel and they communicate with each other in a very specific way.”
In the United States, the courts have been asked to confer legal rights on animals, such as chimpanzees, but so far have declined to do so. Lawyers have argued that there are practical problems associated with conferring legal rights on animals. The problems associated with giving plants legal rights may be even greater.
