Bless the beasts

If, in some future incarnation, I ever come back to Earth as an animal, I could do much worse than to end up in Switzerland.  In fact, if an initiative currently on the ballot scheduled for voting on 7 March 2010 is passed, I could not do better anywhere else on Earth.

The initiative asks voters to decide whether each of Switzerland's 26 cantons (similar to states in the US) should be required to appoint an animal lawyer to represent the interests of pets and farm animals in court.  If passed, this would mean that every canton would in effect have a dedicated public prosecutor for dogs, cats and other vertebrates that have been abused by humans.   The initiative was launched after the group, Swiss Animal Protection, successfully gathered some 144,000 signatures to force a nationwide vote.  Swiss Animal Protection argues that abuses on pets are often not taken seriously by local authorities and don't make it up to court.

The canton of Zurich has already pioneered animal rights.  It has had a part-time post of animal welfare attorney there since 2007.   French-Swiss lawyer Antoine F. Goetschel, who holds the post, is Europe's only animal lawyer and the figurehead for a movement that wants to expand Zurich's pioneering legal system across Switzerland.   Goetschel is also one of the founders of the Zurich-based Foundation for the Animal in the Law, which has the largest public library of texts on animal welfare law and animal ethics in the German-speaking world.
 
According to Goetschel, the Swiss constitution now prohibits keeping pigs in single pens and parakeets alone in a cage.  Those who own dogs have to take a training course.  Beginning in 2013, it will be forbidden to tie horses in their stalls.   Goetschel has already acted on behalf of a dead pike, after prosecutors in Zurich accused a fisherman of torture because the battle between man and fish lasted about ten minutes.  I can picture the reaction of sports fisherman in Montana to such a "trial" and it would not be pretty.  The complaint was not successful, by the way.
 

The Swiss federal government is not on board with this initiative, saying that animal lawyers are unnecessary and existing laws are sufficient.  We'll have to see what the voting outcome will be on 7 March.
 
In another vein, one perhaps not quite as draconian as appointing a prosecutor to enforce animal rights, there are groups that are raising funds so that frogs, toads, salamanders and similar species can get from one side of the road to the other without becoming vehicle casualties.   As the weather grows warmer, these amphibians leave their winter nests to migrate to the ponds and marshes to reproduce, encountering major highways as obstacles.  The association Pro Natura Genève, together with other communal and association partners, has mobilized efforts to create seven tunnels, called crapauducs, that will allow these little creatures to pass underneath the most frequented highways in those areas where their best-known routes are affected.  Such passages are necessary to maintain genetic diversity in these species.

All things considered, and if I am in a position to have my "druthers," I'd like to come back as a horse and yes, I'd like to live in Switzerland!