16 THENEWYORKER, APRIL 18, 2022L
ake Mary Jane is shallow—twelve
feet deep at most—but she’s well
connected. She makes her home in
central Florida, in an area that was
once given over to wetlands. To the
north, she is linked to a marsh, and to
the west a canal ties her to Lake Hart.
To the south, through more canals,
Mary Jane feeds into a chain of lakes
that run into Lake Kissimmee, whichfeeds into Lake Okeechobee. Were
Lake Okeechobee not encircled by
dikes, the water that f lows through
Mary Jane would keep pouring south
until it glided across the Everglades
and out to sea.
Mary Jane has an irregular shape
that, on a map, looks a bit like a wom-
an’s head in profile. Where the back of
the woman’s head would be, there’s a
park fitted out with a playground and
picnic tables. Where the face would be,
there are scattered houses, with long
docks that teeter over the water. Peo-
ple who live along Mary Jane like to
go boating and swimming and watch
the wildlife. Toward the park side of
the lake sits an islet, known as Bird Is-
land, that’s favored by nesting egrets
and wood storks.
Like most of the rest of central Flor-ida, Mary Jane is under pressure from
development. Orange County, which
encompasses the lake, the city of Or-
lando, and much of Disney World,
is one of the fastest-growing counties
in Florida, and Florida is one of the
fastest-growing states in the nation. A
development planned for a site just
north of Mary Jane would convert
nineteen hundred acres of wetlands,pine flatlands, and cypress forest into
homes, lawns, and office buildings.
In an effort to protect herself, Mary
Jane is suing. The lake has filed a case
in Florida state court, together with
Lake Hart, the Crosby Island Marsh,
and two boggy streams. According to
legal papers submitted in February, the
development would “adversely impact
the lakes and marsh who are parties to
this action,” causing injuries that are
“concrete, distinct, and palpable.”
A number of animals have preceded
Mary Jane to court, including Happy,
an elephant who lives at the Bronx Zoo,
and Justice, an Appaloosa cross whose
owner, in Oregon, neglected him. There
have also been several cases brought by
entire species; for instance, the palila,
a critically endangered bird, success-
fully sued Hawaii’s Department of Landand Natural Resources for allowing
feral goats to graze on its last remain-
ing bit of habitat. (The palila “wings
its way into federal court in its own
right,” Diarmuid O’Scannlain, a judge
on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit, wrote in a decision that
granted the species relief.)
Still, Mary Jane’s case is a first. Never
before has an inanimate slice of nature
tried to defend its rights in an Amer-
ican courtroom. Depending on your
perspective, the lake’s case is either bor-
derline delusional or way overdue.
“It is long past time to recognize
that we are dependent on nature, and
the continued destruction of nature
needs to stop,” Mari Margil, the exec-
utive director of the Center for Dem-
ocratic and Environmental Rights, saidin a statement celebrating the lawsuit.
“Your local lake or river could sue
you?” the Florida Chamber of Com-
merce said. “Not on our watch.”T
he notion that “natural objects” like
woods and streams should have
rights was first put forward half a cen-
tury ago, by Christopher Stone, a law
professor at the University of Southern
California. Stone, who died last year, was
a son of the crusading journalist I. F.
Stone, and as a kid, in the nineteen-fifties,
he sometimes helped put out his father’s
newspaper, I. F. Stone’s Weekly. In the fall
of 1971, the younger Stone was assigned
to teach U.S.C.’s introductory course on
property law, and in one class he deliv-
ered a lecture on how ownership rights
had evolved over time. Near the end of
the hour, sensing that his students’ mindsFor most of history, people saw themselves as dependent on their surroundings, and rivers and mountains had the last word.AMERICAN CHRONICLESTESTING THE WATERS
Should the natural world have rights?BYELIZABETH KOLBERTILLUSTRATION BY MARION FAYOLLE