A small town west of Montreal has made a rare move on tree rights.
Terrasse-Vaudreuil has officially recognized trees as living beings with rights of their own, in what an environmental organization says is a first in Quebec and Canada.
A resolution adopted by city council on June 9 declares that trees are worthy of protection, “including the right to life, to natural growth, to integrity and to regeneration.”
Mayor Michel Bourdeau said Quebec filmmaker André Desrochers inspired the community to act. He said Desrochers’ film, Des arbes et des arts, convinced citizens that trees are living entities that breathe and communicate with each other through their root systems.
“A tree is like a human being,” Bourdeau said. “It breathes, it lives, it takes in water. It protects us from all sorts of things.”
The International Observatory of Nature Rights said the town of about 2,000 also became the first municipality in Quebec and Canada to sign on to the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Tree, an international initiative led by environmental groups.
Its three main core articles state that trees are living beings and a common human good, that life on Earth depends on their existence, and that humans must act in “fraternity and solidarity” with them.
Bourdeau said the new resolution means the town will review its existing rules and bylaws so trees are protected or replaced if they must be cut down. He also said he plans to add measures to increase the canopy, including offering trees for residents to plant.
“Trees are a true green infrastructure,” he said. “They help reduce urban heat islands, improve air quality, manage precious water resources and protect biodiversity.”
Bourdeau said councillors adopted the move unanimously, and it appears popular with citizens as well.
He said he does not expect it to cause problems, such as interfering with development, partly because the town has no more vacant land on which to build.
He said Terrasse-Vaudreuil is a natural fit to become a tree ambassador because it is built in the woods and its citizens value a rural lifestyle. He said residents are also closely aware of the damage caused by extreme weather and climate change after being flooded three times in recent years.
When it comes to fighting climate change, “our biggest ally is the trees,” he said.
Yenny Vega Cardenas, president of the International Observatory of Nature Rights, said the declaration on tree rights is part of the same push that has led jurisdictions around the world, from New Zealand to Colombia, to grant legal personhood to rivers and other natural areas.
She said it has also happened in Canada, where Quebec’s Magpie river was granted legal rights by a regional government and the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit in 2021.
But Vega Cardenas said the tree declaration is different because it acknowledges that a single tree is an ecosystem of its own, which can provide shade, food and habitat for other species.
“We need to understand that [trees] have dignity and they have senses,” she said. “Not sentiments, but senses … They can feel and they communicate with each other in a very specific way.”
Karine Peloffy, a lawyer with Ecojustice, called Terrasse-Vaudreuil’s decision a “very hopeful gesture in the broader movement for the rights of nature,” and said the idea is not as strange as it might first seem.
“We know corporations have legal personhood and rights and they are definitely not living,” she said in a phone interview. “So if some nonliving things can have legal personhood, what’s stopping living beings from equally getting legal personhood?”
In her view, there is no reason trees should not be granted legal status.
“What do trees do if not standing?” she said. “If anything has standing, it’s a tree.”
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