"A growing number of scientists are backing laws recognizing that nature has inherent rights and intrinsic value. A group of wetlands scientists wants the critical ecosystems they study to be next."

"VICTORIA FALLS, Zimbabwe — On a bright and clear day, Gillian T. Davies reached the end of a winding dirt track where armed guards waited. 

The ecologist from Massachusetts was attending an international conference on wetlands that would influence the future of the world’s fastest-disappearing ecosystems. The sessions were not going well. 

So, on the conference’s break day, Davies hired a local guide and headed deep into the African bush to find one of the threatened species that frequent the wetlands she’s fighting for. 

The guards, clad with AK-47-style rifles slung over their shoulders, were a round-the-clock team protecting a crash of white rhinoceroses from poachers. Davies felt a surge of gratitude for the men, but wondered: What had her species become that such a thing was necessary?"

Katie Surma reports for Inside Climate News October 5, 2025. [2]