News and Features
Leading the Pack on Animal Rights Law
By Roberta Staley published Jul 2, 2012
Lawyer Rebeka Breder is committetd to defending creatures that cannot defend themselves. We find out what drives her and where the world of animal rights law is headed
When the cellphone rang one night at 9:30, it was with bad news. The caller, Nicolle Huminuik, was a member of the Invermere Deer Protection Organization, a citizens group hastily formed to stop the cull of deer in the mountain city near Kootenay National Park. Huminuik said her neighbour had just given the city permission to use the yard for a Clover trap, a mesh cage with bait and a trip wire. Huminuik was distraught and wanted to remove the trap before deer were harmed. "I could completely relate," says her lawyer, Rebeka Breder. "But as legal counsel I told her she had no right to do it."
The IDPO formed in February after Invermere city council voted to cull 100 of the estimated 175 deer that were nibbling urban landscape and gardens into disarray. Some citizens also complained that does, protective of their fawns, were attacking dogs and people. The community split into camps that sparred on Facebook. The anti- group, outraged by the cruelty--deer bloodying themselves attempting escape, collapsing in exhaustion, then being dispatched hours later with a slaughterhouse bolt gun--searched for a lawyer to help them stop the cull. It couldn't be just anyone, IDPO cofounder Shane Suman says. They picked Breder not only because of her expertise in animal law but also for her "passion for animal rights."
She hasn't disappointed.
To laypeople, the provincial Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act would seem protection enough for wild creatures, but they aren't covered by that legislation, and "nothing under the British Columbia Wildlife Act says that you can't be cruel to wildlife," says Breder, an animal law litigator with Boughton Law Corporation and founder of the Canadian Bar Association's Animal Law section. She argued that common law gives citizens the chance to take part in the decision-making process on matters of community importance.
