Gated Arks in Sacrifice Zones: Vantara and the Political Economy of “Conservation”
Gated Arks in Sacrifice Zones: Vantara and the Political Economy of “Conservation” AKHAR BANDYOPADHYAY ⤡ On Behalf of Ecotopians of Alternity⤡ Posted on 20th April, 2026 (GMT 08:13 hrs) ABSTRACT Vantara, the 3,500-acre private wildlife sanctuary run by the Reliance Foundation in Jamnagar and inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 4th March 2025, is promoted as the world’s largest rescue centre. Through a radical ecological-regenerative lens grounded in animal liberation ethics and multispecies justice, this analysis reveals it as a gated corporate biopolitical enclosure that converts ecological refugees—produced by Reliance’s polluting refinery and global extractivism—into spectacles for dynastic branding and moral capital. Integrating controversies over dubious sourcing, transport trauma, CITES due-diligence failures, media suppression, and climatic hypocrisy with a comparison of ex-situ Humboldt penguin facilities (Vantara and Byculla) against proven in-situ effor...