Quebec town recognizes trees as rights-bearing living beings (opens in new tab)

Terrasse-Vaudreuil, a town west of Montreal, adopted a council resolution on June 9 recognizing trees as living beings with rights of their own, including rights “to life, to natural growth, to integrity and to regeneration”. Yenny Vega Cardenas, president of the International Observatory on the Rights of Nature, said the municipality of about 2,000 people became the first in Quebec and Canada to formally adhere to the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Tree. Mayor Michel Bourdeau sai...