The Role of Science in Animal Protection Legislation with Lori Marino

Thank you very, very much Laurie, Rebecca, and thank you to LEAP and Yale University for inviting me, and thank you to everyone for sharing your lunch with me and coming to this event. It's been something I've looked forward to for a long time. And today I want to talk about, specifically, a new program, a new area that I've become involved with as a scientist that's brought me into contact with some amazing people like the people in animal law here and around the country, actually. There we go. OK, great. So, as Laurie mentioned, I've done a lot of work as an expert witness in area of policy, legislation, litigation for other animals. And the reason that I've been so involved is because animal attorneys, and people who are working on policy for other animals, tend to come to scientists for the data and the evidence that they need to make their arguments. I always tell my students, the first question you should always ask about another animal is, who are you? Who are you? And scientists can be the people who can tell you who that individual or that member of that species is. And animal advocates of all kinds need to be able to utilize the scientific data on who other animals are. And, over the years, I've come to realize that probably one of the most powerful ways to take science, science data, scientific knowledge and insights and put it into effect for other animals is through animal law. So animal law, in all of its facets, really depends heavily on bringing the scientific evidence and expertise to bear on arguments for other animals. What I learned, in interacting with the animal law community and world over the years, is that animal law students and law students in general really don't get a lot of training, necessarily, in some of the science on methodology that would be helpful to them to do their job. And not all animal law students, for instance, come from a science background but could definitely use the science to empower their legal work. So there really is a great need for a lot more interaction between scientists and animal lawyers, and that means students, and practitioners, and theorists period. These are two groups of people who are experts in their respective fields, and if they talk to each other more, and if they interact more, I think that we can do even better things for other animals. So first, I want to tell you a little bit about some of the work I've done being involved in animal protection legislation both in Canada and in the United States. And then, I want to tell you about a new program, that formalizes all of this, that just launched just a couple of months ago. I hope you get involved in it. So here's some examples and some cute faces. Back in 2012, I've done a lot of work with captive dolphins and whales as well as farmed animals, but in 2012, there was a big incident that really rocked the marine mammal community. And that is that the Georgia Aquarium, the Mystic Aquarium, and several other aquariums in the United States applied for a permit to go and get 18 beluga whales out of the sea in Russia and bring them to their aquariums. So why was this a big deal? Because since 1989, no aquariums or marine parks have taken animals from the wild directly. There are loopholes that you can drive a truck through, but not directly. Now here they are, and they're saying in 2012, we're not really taking them from the wild. But what they were doing is paying Russian fishermen to capture the beluga whales and bring them in. Why? Because beluga whales in captivity, they have a very limited genetic range. So they were trying to increase the genetic diversity across their collections. So these places were saying, OK, we can't breed these animals fast enough. We need to bring more genes into the gene pool for the captive collections, so let's go get them from the wild. And this was a huge thing. There were over 9,000 comments made by scientists, proponents, and opponents of this. And I went to Washington, and I testified on the basis of the welfare of these animals and how they do in captivity, which is not very well. In the end, it turns out that their permit was denied. And it was denied on the basis of the fact that they had not done any kind of analysis of how taking 18 beluga whales out of this population would affect that population. So they tried, and they didn't get away with it. But these are the kinds of things that kind of happen all the time, and it's illustrative of what's going on in the dolphin and whale captivity community. Now, in 2017, I was asked to come to Canada as an expert witness for yet another purpose. And that was to give scientific testimony in hearings for a bill that is very, very special and quite unique, bill S-203. This bill passed in 2019, and what it did was, it bans breeding of dolphins and whales in captivity, and using them for entertainment, and importing them, and exporting them for various purposes. There is a few things that you can do. But basically, I was brought in along with a number of scientific colleagues. There's Hal Whitehead, who's an expert in dolphin and whale social complexity. And we all talked about, again, why it's the case that keeping these animals in tanks is not important for conservation, and is not necessarily anything that is going to have an impact upon whether we can serve them in the wild. And after four years of a huge fight in Canada, that bill passed. And now, you cannot breed dolphins and whales in captivity in Canada or use them for entertainment. And there's only one facility there that still has these animals, And that's Marineland, Ontario. But they're banned from breeding, and they are banned from using them for entertainment. And passing that bill really depended upon a lot of the scientific evidence about not only how these animals do in captivity, but what about the welfare? I mean what about the claims of the zoo and aquarium industry that, if you go to see an animal on display, it's somehow educational? Well there's not a shred of evidence for that. So that was one of the things that I was able to talk about in my testimony. Now there's another bill going through Canada called the Jane Goodall Bill, Bill S-218. And what does this do? Well, again, my scientist colleagues and I are heavily involved. This bill would actually go further than the other bill. It would actually phase out keeping elephants in captivity in Canada, and it would ban a number of zoos and other establishments from keeping great apes and other wild animals. It would actually give the Canadian government more power to basically crack down on people keeping tigers, and lions, and bears, and all these kinds of animals in roadside zoos. And actually, in Canada and in North America, the keeping of wild animals in roadside zoos and as exotic pets is through the roof. It's a through the roof problem that has to be solved. There's also something that is really near and dear to my heart. At that same facility, Marineland, there's an orca named Kiska who has been alone in the same tank for 10 years. And she swims around, and around, and around in circles. And the Jane Goodall act would add to what we would need to do to get her out of there and into a sanctuary. So what is it going to take to get this bill passed? It's going to take testimony from scientists of all kinds on all kinds of wild animals, about great apes, elephants, big cats, and so many others. And I just joined the Jane Goodall Institute Cetacean Committee to try to help bring that into being because it's really important that the science be what leads the legislation in this case. And then there's another interesting act that's going around in the United States. That is the SWIMS Act. And the SWIMS Act is the Strengthening Welfare in Marine Settings Act. And what that act would do is, it would end the breeding and import of orcas, beluga whales, false killer whales, and pilot whales in the United States. So that means that any facility like SeaWorld or any of these, Shedd Aquarium in the United States that has these animals will be banned from breeding them, from importing them, and it will basically put an end to keeping these animals in entertainment facilities. Because if you can't breed them, and you can't bring them in, you are then phasing them out. And that is a big order, but it is something that is making the rounds now. And a lot of us, as scientists, are lobbying people in DC to get them to understand how important this bill really is. Without the science on who dolphins and whales are, it's difficult to make the case for an act like this, legislation like this. But, in fact, there's an abundance of data showing that whales and dolphins, of all kinds, fare very poorly living in concrete tanks. We have the evidence. We have the peer-reviewed science. And the next step is then to take that science and put it on the ground, so it can actually do some good for these animals. This is just an example of just a few of the different ways that science, my experience has been that science plays an important role in animal law and animal legislation.

I want to turn to, now, telling you about a really exciting new initiative that started a couple of years ago. And we launched just this past couple of months. And it's something I want to tell you about because it's a way to bring scientists, and animal legal scholars, and students together. This is a project that I'm doing with Kathy Hessler at George Washington University, and it's under the Animal Legal Education Initiative, and we launched it in late 2022. And our goal is to bring together animal lawyers, scholars, policymakers, and experts in both the natural and social sciences to address a main question. And that is, what can science do for animal law? So those of you who are in animal law now might have asked yourselves that question at some point, like, Jesus, if I could have, fill in the blank, then I really could do this. Part of the reason why we're doing this is to ask that question of animal legal scholars and students and provide the answer. What would a legal system, properly informed by scientific understanding about animals and the harms of their usage, actually look like? So the goal of this program is to create new pathways of collaboration across a number of different disciplines that will empower animal protection. So what will we be doing through this program? Well, we'll be offering all kinds of activities, and programs, and resources that bring science and animal law together. We plan to do a number of things this year, develop a directory of scientific experts who are eager to contribute to animal advocacy. As a scientist, I can tell you that a lot of my colleagues do not want to do animal advocacy. They consider it to be unscientific, or it's not something that they want to get involved with. But we need more scientists to step out and say, look, this is what I know. And that knowledge that I have can be used by people who are developing legislation and litigating on behalf of animals to empower protection for these animals. So we're developing a directory of scientific experts whose arms we're going to twist to make sure that they're the kind of people who you can call on if you need a scientific expert in whatever case you're dealing with. We also want to increase the presence of science in animal law conferences. As a scientist, I go to the science conferences. And as a lawyer, you go to lawyer conferences. And the two don't ever meet. But, in fact, the past few years, I've been going to a lot of lawyer conferences. And the reason is, is because there's something important that happens when scientists and lawyers talk together and interact. And that what's important there is, you get more than the sum of its parts. So we're going to try to develop a presence at both science and animal law conferences. And we plan to offer more advanced courses and develop curricula. And the whole point of this is that through our work, we hope to increase awareness and foster discussion of the ways animal law and science interact and can empower each other.

So what we plan for the next few months, I'm going to tell you about now. We have a listserv. We have some live webinars that we're going to offer. We have a website that's coming online, and, as I mentioned, the presence at conferences. So who can resist putting a quokka up there? I mean, you have to. So I did. So one thing we have is, we have a listserv that we just started, an animal law and science listserv. And this is where you can go and join a public forum where all things animal law and science can be discussed, news, announcements about animal law and science. And you can just subscribe by either copying that down or contacting me, and I'm more than happy to get you signed up and into the listserv. What I'm really excited about that's happening this spring is, we've got some live webinars that we're producing. These webinars are going to be webinars at the intersection of science and animal law, and we're going to be offering three of them that I'll describe to you. One is law for scientists. Another one is natural science for lawyers. And another one is social science for lawyers. And we'll talk about, why those three? So the goal of these webinars is to really start the conversation between scientists and lawyers about what we need to do to get better protections for other animals. They'll feature experts from the sciences as well as law. And we hope that these will be built on in the future so that they're just the beginning of a conversation. So one of the ones that we're going to be offering this spring is Animal Law 101 for Scientists. And it's interesting, I mean, how many science students really get to ever interface with law? But there are a lot of scientists and a lot of science students who may feel that they might be interested in applying their knowledge and skills to helping people who can actually make a difference for other animals. So this is going to be about, if you're a scientist, what are the different ways you can help animal lawyers do their job better? We'll discuss how scientists can help strengthen animal legal efforts, lobbying policy, litigation, et cetera. And it will be the start of a conversation between scientists, and legal experts, and practitioners to develop more seamless communication and interaction. Part of it is about language. I mean, scientists have their own language. Legal people have their own language. And part of this is getting to talk to each other in a way that makes sense and that allows you to do what you want to do. So part of this webinar will be about that communication. I think, overarching, for this kind of webinar, in my view, the most important goal is, can we break down the reluctance many scientists have for getting involved in animal advocacy? As I mentioned, if you are a scientist and you get involved in animal advocacy you are going to be criticized, and you're going to have a tough row to hoe. And what we're trying to do here is to make it more acceptable, more mainstream for scientists and science students to get involved in legal advocacy for other animals. So maybe this is a way to start by telling people what they need to know and what they can give to animal legal advocacy to make the world better for other animals. So that's one of them. Then we're going to have another webinar, and this is really interesting, Natural Science 101 for Animal Attorneys. So this is all about you as attorneys, legal scholars, what do you need to know about natural sciences, about who the other animals are, about methodology, about welfare science, veterinary science, evolution, comparative psychology, all that fun stuff? What do you need to know about in order to work with scientists to strengthen your legal effort? The webinar will serve as an introduction to basic terms, and concepts, and resources, and it will include all kinds of topics like, what kinds of evidence are actually strongest, basic statistics, finding the best expert witness, critical thinking about scientific papers, how do you know when you're putting forth a scientific paper, and its results in a court, that that's the best you can do? Well maybe it is. Maybe it isn't It really depends upon you knowing everything else that's out there. How to involve scientists early on in strategizing. And, again, this webinar is going to be followed by the development of an expert bank of scientists who agree to be listed as advisors, and officials, and so forth. Then we have another one called Social Science 101 for Animal Attorneys. This one is really all about human psychology and what animal legal advocates need to know about how we tick in order to do their job better. So, focused on human psychology and how it impacts how we think about other animals, and how this affects strategies and outcomes. I work a lot in the area of animal rights. The area I've worked with in Nonhuman Rights Project on personhood. And there are certain things that we all, sort of schemes or models of nature that we all have in our mind. One of them is human exceptionalism, that somehow we're at the top of some great chain of being, and all the other animals are below us, and we're qualitatively different. And even though most people would say, no, I don't think that way, when you really look at how people act, that is how they think. And so do judges and other people in the courtroom. So what do you do about that? How do you break that down, or how do you deal with that implicit bias? It's an unconscious bias. How do you deal with the fact that there are certain words that are really triggering like personhood? Is a chimpanzee, or an elephant, or an orca a person? Well, by asking that question a certain way, you may actually be triggering the judges to feel a certain way about the case, and that could impact the outcome. So how do you understand the human mind and the biases that we come in with and work that so that you're not working against yourself? How do you understand prejudices, and attitude change, and groupthink, and decision making, all that stuff? There's a tremendously rich literature out there on these issues, and they're often not really applied in the legal realm. And so, in this webinar, we're going to have discussions between social scientists and animal lawyers about these issues, about how judges make decisions, what words are triggers for biases, what concepts are difficult for people to accept, and how you get around them, how you deal with them. So with these three introductory webinars that we're going to roll out in the spring, we hope that this becomes the beginning of a really important formalization of conversations between science and animal law in a way that really does empower legal advocacy for other animals. So watch for these Animal Law and Science programs and websites in the next few months. And that's what I want to say. And I'm willing to take questions.