Madison, WI — Rights of Nature is a fast growing legal movement recognizing that in order to best protect the natural world, we must recognize it has having legal rights. Today, State Representative Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point), and a group of Legislative Democrats introduced, a package of bills progressing the Rights of Nature in Wisconsin. This package contains three parts, The first part is a bill reviving “Prove it First”, a once bipartisan protection for Wisconsin’s water resources, The second, is a resolution supporting the “Rights of Nature” movement throughout Wisconsin, and the third is a bill recognizing the legal rights of Devil’s Lake State Park, protecting it for generations to come.
Representative Miresse shared the following:
“Human health is inseparable from the health of the natural world. We know this. Yet today’s laws treat rivers, forests, and ecosystems as materials for consumption and dumping grounds, rather than as living systems of which we are a part of, not separate from.”
“Corporations are merely ideas that exist on paper, yet they have legally recognized rights, even personhood in some cases under the law. Meanwhile, our lakes, forests, and rivers, actually tangible and essential to life, are exploited, mishandled, and rendered silent. Our bill package joins Wisconsin with the growing international movement to recognize the Rights of Nature in law, affirming that protecting clean air, clean water, and healthy soil is inseparable from protecting ourselves.”
