PHOTO BY Nour Wageh
Are Zoos Good for Conservation? The Uncomfortable Truth
There is a lion in the photograph at the top of this page. You can see the bars.
I have photographed lions in the Serengeti and the Maasai Mara — in long grass at first light, moving through open country, entirely themselves. The difference between those two images is not compositional. It is the difference between a life and the performance of one.
I am not neutral on this subject. I have spent years in the field with wild animals, and I have seen what it costs them to be removed from it. This is not a balanced assessment of zoos. It is an honest one.
Conservation only works in the wild. A species held behind glass is not being saved. It is being preserved, like a specimen.
Zoos have long justified their existence through conservation. The argument is familiar: without captive breeding programmes, some species would already be extinct. Without zoo revenue, there would be no funding for field research. Without zoos, the public would have no connection to wildlife at all. Each of these claims deserves scrutiny.
An analysis of accredited zoos found that only 3.5% of the animal species they housed were on the IUCN Red List. A full 62% were animals of least concern — species under no meaningful threat in the wild. Zoos do not fill their enclosures with the animals that most need protection. They fill them with the animals that draw the most visitors.
Of the endangered species in captive collections, very few are part of any active reintroduction programme. No gorillas, polar bears, elephants, tigers, or chimpanzees born in a zoo have ever been released into the wild.
Captive-bred animals often cannot survive outside captivity — they lack the behaviours, the social structures, the territory knowledge that wild life requires. The zoo has made them dependent on the zoo.
What Captivity Does to an Animal
The global wildlife population has declined by 68% in the past fifty years. Approximately 15,000 species are currently listed as endangered or threatened. This is the crisis zoos claim to be addressing.
But consider what captivity itself costs. Zoochosis — a psychological condition caused by chronic confinement — manifests as repetitive, compulsive behaviour: pacing, head-swaying, bar-biting. It is documented across species, from elephants to polar bears to great apes. It is not an occasional occurrence. It is a predictable consequence of removing a wide-ranging, socially complex animal from the conditions its mind evolved for.
An elephant in the wild may roam up to 80 kilometres in a day. In captivity, she is given an enclosure. A lion pride holds a territory of up to 260 square kilometres. In a zoo, the figure is considerably smaller. These are not minor adjustments to an animal’s life. They are the removal of almost everything that makes that life possible.
When a zoo makes a profit — through ticket sales, merchandise, birthday parties, corporate events — that profit depends on animals remaining in enclosures. The financial model and the animal’s freedom are, structurally, in opposition.
The Species We Are Losing
The wildlife I photograph is disappearing. These are not abstract statistics. These are animals I know — individuals with histories, with families, with territories I have spent time in.
Lions
1,200,000 · 1880
Fewer than 20,000 today
98% decline
Elephants
1,300,000 · 1970s
Fewer than 500,000 today
Over 60% decline
Rhinos
500,000 · 1900
Approximately 29,000 today
94% decline
Trophy hunting accelerates this. Poaching accelerates this. Habitat loss accelerates this. None of these pressures are addressed by a captive breeding programme in a zoo in a northern city. They are addressed by protecting land, by supporting the rangers who patrol it, and by ensuring that the economic value of a living wild animal outweighs the value of a dead one.
What About Rescue and Rehabilitation?
There are organisations that take in injured, orphaned, or confiscated animals — animals that cannot be returned to the wild. Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in Kenya’s Samburu is one. The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust at Ithumba is another. These places exist because wild animals are sometimes left without a viable alternative.
But there is a meaningful difference between a sanctuary that rehabilitates animals toward release, and a zoo that breeds animals for permanent display. The former is a response to a crisis. The latter creates a permanent dependency and calls it conservation.
Even among sanctuaries, standards vary. Some operate with genuine care and rigorous rehabilitation protocols. Others use the language of rescue while still selling proximity — cub petting, elephant bathing, photo opportunities with sedated predators. The word sanctuary does not guarantee the thing.
My position is straightforward: if an animal can live in the wild, it should. If it cannot, the goal of any facility holding it should be to change that, not to profit from the limitation.
A Different Relationship with Wild Animals
I make fine art photographs of wild animals — in the places they belong, moving through landscapes that belong to them. What I try to capture is not spectacle. It is presence. The quality of a lion at rest in long grass, entirely unhurried by your attention. The particular stillness of an elephant that has decided you are not a threat.
These images exist because those animals are free. The photograph holds something that a zoo enclosure cannot produce — not because the animal looks different, but because it is different. It is itself.
When you bring a print of a wild animal into your home, you are not decorating a wall. You are choosing a side.
A portion of every print sale goes directly to conservation in the field. Elephant prints support Reteti Elephant Sanctuary and the Amboseli Trust for Elephants — organisations doing the actual work of protecting wild populations in the places those animals live. Rhino prints support Care for Wild, the largest rhino sanctuary in the world, which rehabilitates orphaned rhinos toward release.
This is what it looks like to support conservation. Not a ticket to a zoo, but a direct investment in wild land, wild animals, and the people who protect them.
support animals in the wild
The fine art collection at Deanna DeShea features limited edition prints of wild animals photographed across Kenya and Tanzania. Each edition is limited to 50 prints per size, hand signed and numbered, printed on Hahnemühle archival paper.
Every purchase supports conservation directly. The animal in the print benefits from the sale of it.
That is a different proposition to a zoo ticket. And it is a better one.
