This astonishing proclamation of rights is perhaps the most extreme manifestation of anti-speciesism to date, way beyond the demands of animal rights campaigners who are already doing all they can to erase the differences between mankind and the animal world.

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Even more remarkably, the “Declaration of tree rights” was adopted in a meeting room of the French National Assembly in Paris last Friday.

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The symposium was organized under the title “Remarkable Trees” by a member of the National Assembly and former minister Delphine Batho, president of the French political environmentalist party Génération écologie since last September who is no mere backbencher.

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She was elected to the National Assembly in 2007 and has since then had several high-ranking appointments. She was spokeswoman of François Hollande during his candidacy in 2012. After he was elected president of France, she became deputy minister of Justice, and after a cabinet reshuffle, minister of Ecology, Sustainable development and Energy. She left the government after having criticized the budget allocated to her ministry in 2013 and returned to the National Assembly under Socialist party colors before joining the Environmentalists in 2018.

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Batho personally presided at the tree symposium together with the president of a society for the protection of trees, “A.r.b.r.e.s” and also published a number of tweets announcing the enthusiastic adoption of the declaration of rights by all the participants.

“So the declaration of rights for #trees has triggered quite a few ironic comments here… Here are a few very solid reading suggestions to share and to like,” she tweeted, adding pictures of books about the “good use” and the “secret lives” and “sensitivity” of trees.

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She retweeted the message of an environmentalist urging readers to “write out” the declaration “100 times.”

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