In the zoo in Amsterdam, two elephants have been born. Their births are being celebrated under the guise of “conservation.” This act of “conservation” is presented as necessary, since the existence of elephants is said to be under threat “due to the loss of habitat and poaching.”
It is presented as if habitat loss and poaching exist in a vacuum, rather than as what they are: consequences of white supremacy, which reduces all that lives to mere “resources” (for which reason the land is pillaged and elephants are now viewed as commodities from which a profit can be made).
Had the land to which, and on which, the elephants belong not been violently occupied by white imperial forces, the land and all animals on it would not have been turned into “resources” to be used at their disposal. Colonization has displaced Indigenous people and severed the deep bonds between land, animals, and community.
Breeding elephants in captivity is not an act of salvation. It is the continuation of the same systems that endangered them in the first place. Systems that profit off their existence while claiming to protect them. This is white saviourism. This is not justice.
Real conservation requires justice. The land must be returned to Indigenous people. The animals must be returned to their lands and given back their agency. The land must be left alone to restore and rebuild itself. Only then can the bonds between land, people, and animals be reformed, and will survival of all be possible.
No land is a commodity. Nor should any human or animal ever be.
So let us call the birth of these two elephants, under the guise of “conservation,” what it truly is: white supremacy disguised as doing good.
Because real justice for elephants means protecting their wild habitats and giving them back their agency — not breeding them for display.