This week, the Quebec town of Terrasse-Vaudreuil became the first government in Canada to recognize trees as living things with rights.

It is part of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Trees, a global movement begun in Paris in 2018 to treat trees like people, with rights including “the right to life, to natural growth, to integrity and to regeneration.”

The town’s gesture of recognition is largely symbolic, but it sets the stage for tests in various courts in Canada around its legal validity. All to say, what used to be thought an absurd proposition by many will soon be treated seriously by the law.

Read on…