Friday Forecast

February 7, 2025

Welcome to our first Friday Forecast issue of the spring semester. The Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program (ALPP) and Animal Law & Policy Clinic (ALPC) team is excited to share the following updates and events with you.

Animal Law & Policy Clinic Updates

FWS proposes listing Antillean manatee as endangered: In 2022, ALPC submitted a petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, Save the Manatee Club, Miami Waterkeeper, and Frank S. González Garcia requesting stronger Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for West Indian manatees. In March 2024, on behalf of that petitioning group, ALPC notified FWS of its intent to sue for failing to timely respond to the listing petition. On January 14, 2025, FWS proposed listing the two West Indian manatee subspecies under the ESA, with the Florida manatee listed as threatened and the Antillean manatee uplisted as endangered.

Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostrus). Credit: Jim Reid, FWS.

ALPC Faculty Director Professor Mary Hollingsworth commented on the decision: “While we are disappointed by the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision not to extend endangered status to all West Indian manatees, we are pleased that the agency acknowledged the endangered status of the Antillean manatee. We remain steadfast in our commitment to advocate for the conservation of all West Indian manatees.”

Massachusetts agrees to review rodenticides: The Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) agreed to undertake a scientific review of anticoagulant rodenticide products in response to a petition submitted by ALPC on behalf of a coalition of Massachusetts residents. The petition called on MDAR’s Pesticide Subcommittee to immediately suspend anticoagulant rodenticide product registration and undertake an individual review of those products, which the coalition believes will show that anticoagulant rodenticides cause “unreasonable adverse effects to the environment.” On December 17, 2024, the Pesticide Subcommittee voted to undertake a scientific review, which it represented will form the basis for the individual review. Thus far, the Pesticide Subcommittee has been silent on the coalition’s request to suspend registrations.

Agreement reached to end most ranching in Point Reyes: a group of animal and environmental protection organizations and activists celebrated an agreement reached to phase out all dairy and most beef ranching in the Point Reyes National Seashore. The impacts of ranching on the environment and wildlife in Point Reyes has led to litigation, including the lawsuit ALPC brought in 2021 on behalf of Jack Gescheidt, Laura Chariton, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund. ALPC’s lawsuit challenged the National Park Service’s (NPS) decades-long failure to update the General Management Plan (GMP) for Tomales Point in Point Reyes, where a population of Tule Elk has been confined by a miles-long 8-foot-tall fence designed to protect dairy ranches located within the National Seashore. During periods of drought, the elk have been unable to migrate to gain access to nutritious forage and water, resulting in hundreds of starvation deaths. Since ALPC filed suit, NPS has proposed removing the fence as part of new GMP revisions and part of the fence was removed before the decision was challenged in court.

ALPP Faculty Director Professor Kristen Stilt is teaching three courses this spring semester:

Animal Law: This seminar, with an impressive variety of Harvard students enrolled, is introducing students to the broad range of laws that affect non-human animals, including companion animals, farm animals (with a particular focus on factory farms), animals used in the context of entertainment (such as zoos and aquaria), animals used in scientific experimentation, and wild animals.

Outlaw Oceans: This reading group, launched with an energetic first meeting last week, is rigorously exploring the damaging impacts of commercial fishing and aquaculture on the lives and welfare of aquatic animals as well as on ecosystems and human rights. Students have begun reading about and considering the myriad efforts that are underway by individuals and organizations around the world to bring these problems to public attention and to take steps towards improvements.

Writing Group: This writing group challenges students to offer and withstand incisive feedback from peers and supports students in drafting and editing publishable work. It focuses on topics in animal law, environmental law, sustainability, renewable energy, rights of nature, more-than-human rights, climate change, and other related issues.

ALPC Faculty Director Professor Hollingsworth is teaching the Animal Law & Policy Clinic and accompanying Clinical Seminar this semester.

With support from ALPP, the alumni-led HLS Association Animal Law & Policy Network and the student-led Harvard Animal Law Society just launched the inaugural cohort of a new alumni-student animal law mentorship program. This first cohort includes matches between six current HLS students interested in animal law and six alumni working in areas related to animal law.

February 10: ALPP Visiting Fellow Pablo P. Castello will give a virtual talk at the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Law on his 2024 article “Why Seeing Is Not Believing and Why Believing Is Seeing: On the Politics of Sight.”

February 18: ALPC and the Harvard Animal Law Society will host a meet-and-greet event for students from 12:15–1:15pm in WCC 3007 (open to HLS community only).

February 25: There will be a film screening of “Until the End of the World” hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Department of Environmental Health. The award-winning documentary examines the impacts of fish farming on the environment and communities. The film screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film’s director and an expert panel.

Event details:

Tuesday, February 25th from 4–6pm

Kresge G1 Snyder Auditorium

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115

To RSVP to attend, please fill out this form: hsph.me/untiltheend

January 11: ALPP Executive Director Nirva Patel spoke on a webinar on “Achieving Professional Success: Enhancing Your Career with Jain Values” hosted by the JAINA Long Range Planning Committee.

January 16: Professor Stilt gave a talk on “Meat and Zoonotic Disease” at the Defund Meat Conference hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany. Vegconomist covered the conference through an op-ed by Tobias Leenaert.

Recent Scholarship

January 9: ALPP Visiting Fellow Pablo P. Castello’s article “The fabric of zoodemocracy: a systemic approach to deliberative zoodemocracy” was published in the journal Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

First Circuit Reinstates Rule Protecting Right Whales from Lobster and Crab Fishing

French Court Strikes Down Ban on Meat Terms on Plant-Based Product Labels

Colorado Supreme Court Rules Against Habeas Petition for Elephants

GAO Recommends USDA Strengthen Food Safety Oversight and Finalize Standards

Your support makes this vital work possible. We invite you to deepen your ties to ALPC and ALPP through financial support. The Program and the Clinic are not sustained by the Law School, and our work relies on the generosity of our donors. We want to highlight the Clinic’s need in particular because the Clinic is not part of the Program’s endowment.

Please consider making a lasting impact through a donation. Please email ALPP Executive Director Nirva Patel if you would like to learn more about our vision and aims and how you may be able to support them. If you are able to give today, please click here to make a tax-deductible donation.