WHAT REMAINS

The wild is not a metaphor

ol pejeta conservancy

CONSERVATION · BY DEANNA DESHEA

Animals are not symbols placed here for human meaning. They are lives shaped by instinct, environment, and survival.

A portion of every acquisition supports conservation and indigenous-led initiatives across Africa — not as an addendum to the work, but as part of its authorship.

The wild is not a metaphor. It is a living system — fragile, interdependent, and increasingly diminished.

Across landscapes once shaped by abundance, species are disappearing quietly. Not all at once, not always visibly, but steadily. What is being lost is not only animals, but memory, balance, and continuity — relationships between land, life, and time that evolved long before us.

The work presented here is made in acknowledgment of this reality. It does not seek to dramatise loss, nor to aestheticise crisis. Instead, it bears witness — holding space for what still exists, without assuming it will always remain.

Human impact on the natural world is undeniable. Extraction, expansion, and speed have altered ecosystems at a scale that cannot be undone by sentiment alone. Conservation, in this context, is not charity. It is responsibility — an obligation to protect what sustains life beyond ourselves, and to support those working to maintain ecological and cultural continuity on the ground.

Attention precedes care.
Care precedes protection.
This work is offered in that order.

Art cannot restore what has been lost. But it can slow us down long enough to recognise what remains. 

THE PRESSURES

Why it matters
to pay attention

01

Poaching

Poaching is not a local crime. It is a global industry — estimated to generate billions of dollars annually on the black market, ranking alongside arms and drug trafficking as one of the most profitable forms of organised crime on earth. The animals are the product.

The syndicates are the business. Rhino horn, ivory, big cat bones — each one represents a species being systematically extracted for profit, with the proceeds funding criminal networks that operate across continents.

When a poached animal makes the news, it is rarely the story of one desperate individual. It is a transaction in a supply chain that has no interest in what disappears.

02

Habitat Loss

The wild places are shrinking. Not dramatically, not all at once — but steadily, at the edges, season by season. Forests cleared for agriculture.

Corridors broken by roads and fences. Rivers diverted. The land that once connected vast ecosystems is being divided into smaller and smaller fragments, until the animals within them have nowhere left to move.

Wildlife does not thrive in isolation. Elephants walk up to fifty miles a day. Lions require enormous ranges to sustain a healthy pride. When the land goes, the populations that depend on it follow — not through a single catastrophic event, but through a slow arithmetic of loss that rarely makes headlines.

03

Trophy Hunting

The removal of a single animal can undo the stability of an entire population. When an adult male lion is taken from a pride, the consequences extend far beyond one death — competing males move in, cubs are killed, the social structure the pride depends on collapses.

This is not an edge case. It is a documented, predictable outcome, repeated across species wherever trophy hunting operates. The argument that it funds conservation has been studied and contested at length.

What is not contested is the ecological cost: taking the strongest individuals from a population — the ones most likely to ensure its survival — weakens the species at its foundation. That is not a transaction conservation can afford.

SUPPORTED ORGANISATIONS

Conservation Partners

SOUTH AFRICA · KENYA

Care for Wild
Rhino Sanctuary

RHINOS

The world’s largest rhino sanctuary, and one of the most important rehabilitation programmes for critically endangered white and black rhinos. Care for Wild takes in orphaned and injured animals — many direct victims of poaching — and provides the long-term care needed for successful release.

SAMBURU, KENYA

Reteti Elephant
Sanctuary

ELEPHANTS

The first community-owned elephant sanctuary in Africa. Reteti is run by the Samburu community in the Namunyak Conservancy — the same land Deanna photographs. Rescued calves are rehabilitated and returned to the wild. The work is led by the people who have always lived alongside these animals.

Both organisations operate through locally grounded conservation models that place animals and communities within the same system of care.

wildlife conservation activist

collection

Art as an act
of remembrance

Every print purchased supports conservation directly. Named animals. Specific conservancies. Fifty editions, no more.