Savanna

Savanna is a female African elephant who was born in the wild around 1983. As a young calf, she likely was violently taken from her family during a mass capture operation—one of many that occurred in the 1980s in which entire herds were rounded up and the calves torn from their mothers to be sold to foreign zoos. Savanna’s capture marked the end of her freedom. She was imported to the United States and transferred to the Pittsburgh Zoo in 1992, where she has remained confined for more than three decades.

Like all elephants held captive by zoos, Savanna is seen not as an individual, but as a commodity for the zoo industry’s captive breeding programs. Once she reached maturity, she was used for breeding within the Pittsburgh Zoo’s elephant program—one long plagued by controversy and welfare violations. In 1998, she gave birth to a stillborn calf. Two years later, on September 19, 2000, she gave birth to a male calf named Callee, and in 2008, to a daughter named Angeline. Each of these pregnancies was carefully orchestrated and forced by zoo staff to serve the institution’s breeding goals. Savanna’s body was used to produce calves that would spend their lives in captivity, just as she has.

Her role as a mother was not one of freedom or choice. In 2011, when Callee was only ten years old, the Pittsburgh Zoo separated him from her and sent him to the Birmingham Zoo under the justification that young bulls naturally leave their herds—a distortion of reality that obscures the trauma of such forced separations. In the wild, male elephants gradually and voluntarily separate from their families over several years, not by being crated and trucked thousands of miles away. Savanna’s only remaining offspring, Angeline, continues to be confined with her in Pittsburgh, though both remain held captive in a small, artificial environment.

Savanna’s non-familial social structure has been repeatedly fractured by zoo decisions. In 2014, her longtime companion Moja, with whom she had lived for over 25 years, was abruptly transferred to another facility. Advocates condemned the transfer as callous and destabilizing, another example of how the zoo disregards elephants’ deep social bonds in favor of its own management priorities. In October 2025, the zoo announced that sisters Victoria and Zuri, who Savanna has lived with for their entire lives, would soon be moved to another zoo.

For more than 30 years, Savanna has been confined to the Pittsburgh Zoo’s cramped elephant exhibit—an area that provides less than an acre of outdoor space for the entire herd. The elephants are routinely confined indoors during the cold Pennsylvania winters, forced to stand for long hours on concrete floors that cause chronic foot and joint problems. In Defense of Animals has named the Pittsburgh Zoo one of the 10 Worst Zoos for Elephants several times, citing the barren environment, limited space, and abnormal repetitive behaviors observed among the elephants. Visitors have described seeing Savanna and the other elephants pacing and swaying—classic signs of psychological distress in elephants deprived of stimulation and freedom.

The Pittsburgh Zoo has also been the subject of repeated controversy for its handling methods. In 2015, the zoo gave up its accreditation from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) rather than comply with new welfare standards that prohibited the use of bullhooks and required “protected contact” management. Instead, the zoo chose to continue free-contact training, which allows keepers to dominate elephants through direct control and painful tools. The USDA cited the zoo for using dogs to herd and intimidate the elephants—an egregious practice that experts condemned as cruel and dangerous. These decisions underscore the zoo’s prioritization of dominance and control over more humane husbandry practices.

Savanna’s story exemplifies the failures of the zoo industry’s so-called conservation model. The Pittsburgh Zoo’s breeding program has not contributed to the survival of elephants in the wild; instead, it has created generations of elephants destined to live and die in captivity. After decades of captivity, exploitation, and loss, Savanna’s life stands as a stark indictment of the Pittsburgh Zoo’s elephant program and of elephant captivity as a whole.

Savanna deserves more than a lifetime spent behind bars under extreme control by humans. She deserves the chance to live in a true sanctuary—one that offers space, companionship, and dignity. There, she could walk across open land, feel the earth beneath her feet, and make choices for herself for the first time since she was stolen from the wild.