Researchers report that the future for the Earth’s wild animals is very bleak. Two-thirds will be wiped out by 2020. While poaching is partially responsible, the biggest threat to wild animals is our impact on their homes – we kill them when we destroy forests and pollute waterways in the name of development.

Judging by the dramatic decline in the number of wild animals, it is safe to say that existing policy responses are proving ineffective. What’s needed is a fundamental change in how we view wild areas, and the policy responses to match.

Existing habitat protection policy views wild areas as the property of human beings. With property setting the legal and economic background, habitat conservation policy aims to achieve outcomes by requiring land managers to do (or not do) certain things. For example, a land manager may be required to erect fencing around a stand of trees or they may be prohibited from chopping down tall, or very old, trees.

Given the ubiquity of property around the world, it is just pie in the sky to think that an alternative way of managing wild areas will be found before it is too late. What we can do is stop thinking about property in exclusively human terms and extend the concept beyond the human species.

In other words, to give property rights to wild animals.

An animal property rights system would give animals a “voice” during the land management decision-making processes that put their lives at risk. Obviously, animals cannot speak for themselves and some mechanism is needed to facilitate the concept of an animal seat at the development table.

We could mimic the system of guardianship in place for the management of property held by children or people with dementia. The basic idea is that when a landholder wants to modify wild animal habitat they would be required to hear a submission made by a human guardian on behalf of resident animals.

The guardian would have an opportunity to persuade the landholder to modify, delay or abandon their development plans. The landholder would then be obliged to respond in good faith, say, either in writing or at an out of court mediation session.

As radical as such a proposal may seem it is not very different to the kind of vegetation planning and licensing systems that prevail in many countries under existing habitat conservation policy systems. There is one important difference however: in an animal property rights system the person making the case for habitat conservation is independent.

The animal property rights guardian has no financial interest in the success of any development proposal and is not subject to the same kind of political pressures.

An obvious question is who will be the guardians?

A person eligible to serve as an animal property rights guardian would need to have knowledge and skills in relevant fields like ecology, animal welfare, or land-management.

Given it is foreseeable that any mediation sessions between landholders and animal property rights guardians could be adversarial and emotionally charged, superior interpersonal and communication skills would be an advantage.

It is important not to overstate the potential for conflict. Just as some landholders take out conservation covenants over their property and others willingly enter into land use agreements with indigenous titleholders who have co-existing titles to the same parcels of land, some landholders may be enthusiastically willing to embrace animal property rights.

Animal property rights are not designed to bring a halt to development; rather, they are designed to promote the values of existing conservation policy by encouraging land managers to think about wild areas in an altogether new way – as the property of resident animals.