Sanctuary and Species: The Violence of Care/Containment in Conservation

• In Event: Opening up Containment: Spaces, Trajectories, and Forms of Life - III

Abstract

This paper grapples with the entanglements of containment around endangered species conservation and sanctuary. There are only 35 red wolves left in the wild in eastern North Carolina and they are starting to breed with coyotes—their hybrid offspring pose a challenge to conservationists who are trying to save the red wolf from going extinct. Approximately 200 red wolves live in captivity where they are bred with other “pure” members of their species group and kept “safe” behind sanctuary fences. In the Gulf of California, the vaquita, the world’s smallest and most enigmatic porpoise is near extinction with less than 20 individuals left in the wild. Attempts to put these small cetaceans into sanctuaries which are state-of-the-art floating sea enclosures, have resulted in their death upon capture due to stress. The vaquita were only “discovered” as distinct species in 1958 and have remained largely a mythological creature due to their dwindling numbers and their uncanny ability to go unseen. This paper traces the violences of caring for and containing endangered species and grapples with the following questions: How do conservation discourses and practices reproduce colonial and racist logics around species purity and anti-hybridity? What kinds of more-than-human refusal is occurring when the red wolf chooses to interbreed with a species that thrives in the Anthropocene like the coyote? Or when the vaquita goes most of its long existence unseen and unlisted in the taxonomy books and now refuses to be contained in any form of captivity?

Author

• Elana Santana, University of California Santa Cruz