I recently wrote critically about a Quebec town that granted “rights to trees.” These include the rights “to life, to natural growth, to integrity, and to regeneration.”

The new law has gotten a lot of media attention. Now, the New York Times has entered the fray, publishing a relatively objective story about the resolution and the nature rights movement’s history, with only one critic quoted — yours truly, from my NRO article (I was not interviewed).

There is more to say about this than I included in my original post. So, let’s dig a little into the Times’ story:

The small town of Terrasse-Vaudreuil, Quebec, was carved out of the forest about 75 years ago. But until recently, the trees had no rights.

The small town of Terrasse-Vaudreuil, Quebec, was carved out of the forest about 75 years ago. But until recently, the trees had no rights.

The reporter and the townsfolk missed an obvious irony here. The town exists on stolen land! If trees in the forest that were felled to make way for the town had possessed the right to “life, natural growth, to integrity, and to regeneration,” the town could never have been built because those trees would have had the right not to be cut down.

“If we live in........

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