Happy Days? The Bronx Zoo’s star attraction is a tough case for Court of Appeals and court of public opinion
Happy Days? The Bronx Zoo’s star attraction is a tough case for Court of
Appeals and court of public opinion
Robbie Sequeira, Bronx times
May 4, 2022
See link https://www.bxtimes.com/bronx-zoo-elephant-court-case/ for
photos.
On May 18, the New York Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear oral
arguments on the basis of 8,500-pound Happy the Elephant’s stay in the
Bronx Zoo, which marks the first time in history that the highest court of
any English-speaking jurisdiction will hear a habeas corpus brought on
behalf of someone other than a human.
It’s a court hearing and potential landmark case that Happy’s legal team
The Non-Human Rights Campaign says could set a precedent for the future of
animal rights and those held in solitary and captive confinements.
Happy is a “cognitively complex nonhuman animal” that should be freed from
the Bronx Zoo and transferred to a sanctuary, The Nonhuman Rights Project
(NhRP) told the Bronx Times. Happy was the first elephant to pass a mirror
self recognition test, according to NhRP.
But the court of public opinion on the Asian elephant housed in a 1.15-acre
exhibit within Bronx Park is mixed.
Danay Raymond waited two long pandemic years to make a trip with her three
kids to the Bronx Zoo, with the intention of hopping aboard the Wild Asia
Monorail to see the Asian elephant that mimics scenes of the wild in the
Bronx Zoo.
“My kids love elephants. They have elephants backpacks, elephants stickers
all over the house, so they’re really excited to see him,” the 34-year-old
single mother from Soundview told the Times. “It’s hard for me to deny them
that, even if I know there is some controversy surrounding his time at the
Zoo.”
Raymond, like many other zoo patrons, including Washington Heights
residents Jessica Reyes and her husband Michael, flocked to the monorail,
which reopened on Saturday, April 30, to see Happy and another elephant
Patty. NhRP says two two are used rotationally and don’t share an enclosure
due to interpersonal conflict. After housing a number of elephants over the
years, there are just those two left.
On that same Saturday, a protest calling for Happy’s release to an animal
sanctuary took place outside the Bronx Zoo’s main gates.
The Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages four New York City
wildlife parks in addition to the Bronx Zoo, has never faced charges of
abuse against their elephants. The conservation society did not respond to
multiple requests for comment.
Controversy, however, surrounds the perceived unhappiness of the zoo’s star
attraction, as she’s been in isolated captivity for 16 years.
Happy was caught in the wild in 1971 and sold for $800 to a defunct
California-based Zoo. In 1977, proprietors relocated Happy and five other
elephants to circuses and zoos across the U.S., with Happy and another
elephant, Grumpy, sent to the Bronx Zoo to be part of the then newly
created Wild Asia Monorail exhibit.
In 2006, the Bronx Zoo announced no further elephants would be acquired, a
measure taken by other zoos after calls from the public and animal experts
stated that elephants do not belong in captivity thus affecting their
natural behaviors as social creatures.
“If Happy was in a sanctuary among other animals, she would be a matriarch
and she would be thriving among a herd because elephants are social
animals,” said Elizabeth Stein, Happy’s New York counsel and NhRP attorney.
“We’re seeing a shadow of what an elephant is. This is not an elephant
behaving as an elephant could or an elephant should if she was in the wild
and at a sanctuary.”
The road for Happy’s legal team to get a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of
the elephant has been a process that’s taken six years in various
courtrooms, NhRP’s legal team told the Times.
A writ of habeas corpus orders the custodian of an individual in custody to
produce the individual before the court to make an inquiry concerning his
or her detention. In New York state, a writ of habeas corpus may be
obtained by any “person” who has been illegally detained, oftentimes in the
Bronx on behalf of prisoners on Rikers Island.
NhRP contends if a judge grants the petition to move Happy from the zoo to
a sanctuary, in the eyes of the law, she would be a person and have rights.
On Feb. 18, 2020, NhRP lost their case when the judge ruled that Happy is
not a person and not illegally imprisoned. Subsequent appeals on July 10,
2020, and Dec. 17, 2020, also failed.
However, in those rulings, judges lent credibility to NhRP’s battle and
their argument of Happy’s right to fair treatment.
While Bronx County Justice Allison Tuitt “regretfully” denied the habeas
corpus in February 2020, she did not agree with Bronx Zoo’s claim that its
continued imprisonment of Happy is good for her, writing that Happy “is an
intelligent, autonomous being who should be treated with respect and
dignity, and who may be entitled to liberty.”
NhRP said they felt further “vindicated” on May 4, 2021, when the highest
court in New York, the court of appeals, agreed to hear the case.
But detraction among New York’s agricultural industry has since ramped up.
The New York Farm Bureau, New York Dairy Association, and Northeast
Agribusiness and Feed Alliance have all filed a brief in support of the
Wildlife Conservation Society and the Bronx Zoo, and state in their
arguments that extending the writ of habeas corpus to nonhuman animals will
devastate the agricultural industry.
Others skeptical of NhRP’s legal fight have cited Pepperdine law scholar
Richard L. Cupp Jr.’s amicus brief which stated “whether Happy stays with
the Wildlife Conservation Society or is moved to a different location
should be a matter of human responsibility … not a matter of pretending
that Happy is a person.” Cupp’s brief warns that granting personhood to one
elephant would flood the courts with similar appeals for other animals and
for broader rights.
The legacy and implications of this case is profound, with The Atlantic
calling it “the most important animal-rights case of the 21st Century” and
The New Yorker adding this case “to redefine personhood is raising profound
questions.” Nonhuman Rights Project founder Steven Wise and animal rights
advocates say they may not live to see how impactful — if they secure
Happy’s release — the court’s ruling could be for the future of other
animals in captivity.
And citing black marks in the Bronx Zoo’s history, including placing an
African man on display in a monkey house in 1906, Wise said that the
captivity of animals is a human issue.
“In 1906, (the Bronx Zoo) essentially treated a Black man like they do an
elephant at an exhibit and the argument they made back then, are the
arguments they make now to keep Happy in captivity,” said Wise. “The Bronx
is just a terrible brutal way of keeping an elephant. To keep an elephant
in just one acre of space for public profit or appeal is not how we should
treat any living being.”
The Wildlife Conservation Society did issue an apology in 2020, 114 years
later, over the matter.
As for zoogoers, the ethical concerns of captivity brush against the desire
to see larger-than-life-animals, an experience that few institutions such
as the Bronx Zoo, the state’s highest-accredited zoo, provide.
“There’s a part of me that does see a lonely animal that could probably do
better than be housed in the Bronx, nowhere near its natural and social
habitat,” said Casey Zilmer, a sophomore animal studies major at NYU. “But
something about zoos, from their magnificence in exhibits and the animals
you can see, I think it’s hard to break that pattern of behavior and see
them as anything (more) than just an animal for their viewing pleasure.”