DENVER — Five elephants at a Colorado zoo may be “majestic,” but they are not humans and have no legal right to seek their release, the Colorado Supreme Court said Tuesday.
The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision follows a similar defeat in 2022 in New York by an animal rights group against an elephant named Happy at the Bronx Zoo. If the ruling is in favor of the animals, Happy and the lawyers for the elephants at Colorado Springs’ Cheyenne Mountain Zoo (Missy, Kimba, Lucky, Lulu, and Jumbo) will be working hard for years to help inmates challenge their detention and restraint. It was supposed to be possible to move forward with pending legal proceedings. Instead, they may be sent to an elephant sanctuary.
The Colorado court said the decision “does not erase our respect for these majestic animals.”
“Rather, the legal question here ultimately boils down to whether elephants are human beings,” the court said. “And because elephants are not human beings, the elephants here are not entitled to habeas corpus claims,” the ruling said.
The same animal rights group that tried to win Happy’s release, the Inhuman Rights Project, also filed a lawsuit in Colorado.
The organization claims that Colorado elephants born in the wild in Africa show signs of brain damage, and that zoos are essentially an intelligent and social elephant known to roam many miles a day. This is because it serves as a prison for living things. The group believed the elephants could no longer survive in the wild and had called for the animals to be released into one of two certified elephant sanctuaries in the United States.
The zoo argued that moving the elephant and placing it with new animals would be cruel given its age and could cause unnecessary stress. The zoo said the elephants are not used to being part of large herds, and zoo observations show they do not have the skills or desire to join.
The zoo welcomed the Colorado state court’s ruling, but said it regretted having to fight the issue in court and said the Human Rights Project was “abusing the court system” to raise funds. he accused.
“Their real goal is to manipulate people into donating to their cause by relentlessly promoting sensational court cases and persistently soliciting donations from supporters,” the zoo said in a statement. It seems so.”
The Non-Human Rights Project said the latest ruling “perpetuates a clear injustice” and predicted that future courts would reject the idea that only humans have the right to freedom.
“Like other social justice movements, we expect early losses as we challenge the entrenched status quo that allowed Missy, Kimba, Lucky, Lulu, and Jumbo to suffer mentally and physically for the rest of their lives.” mentioned in. .
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