Compassionate conservation and elephant personhood

Abstract

Baker and Winkler (2020) advocate a rehabilitation program that would end the oppression of elephants - not by severing human-elephant relations, but by enabling human-bonded elephants to live a full life. We consider this program within a compassionate conservation framework, which recognises all sentient beings as persons. From this vantage point, we gaze further into the future to ask what direction just human-elephant relations could take: What could emerge from a human-elephant relation once elephants are no longer enslaved and requiring rescue? We envisage a future - beyond captivity and rewilding - of elephant sovereignty.