The continued confinement of Lammie, Ramadiba and Mopane rests on an assumption that their needs can be met within the Johannesburg Zoo. The available evidence suggests that this assumption is no longer secure. An alternative exists.

The continued confinement of three elephants at the Johannesburg Zoo is often framed as a moral debate about captivity. It is now something more precise. On financial, institutional and welfare grounds, the City of Johannesburg can no longer sustain - let alone justify - the conditions required to keep them. As the last elephants held in a zoo in South Africa, Lammie, Ramadiba and Mopane represent not a legacy to preserve, but a model that has reached its inevitable end.

The end of a model

Across much of the world, the keeping of elephants in urban zoos is being reconsidered, and in many cases abandoned. The reasons are not ideological alone. They are rooted in a growing body of scientific and practical understanding about what elephants are, and what they require.

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Elephants are not simply large mammals that need space. They are cognitively complex, socially structured and behaviourally dynamic beings whose lives are organised around movement, memory and relationships. In the wild, they traverse vast areas, engage in multilayered social systems and respond continuously to environmental variation.

Captivity, by its nature, cannot replicate these conditions. At best, it distantly approximates them. At worst, it severely suppresses them.

The Johannesburg...