If anything, I find that the elephant situation with Damian is quite significantly done perhaps for publicity reasons - the general public knows little about conservation in general, so when they see headlines of how Damian, affiliated with Carrie Johnson, released 13 elephants to native Africa, they would likely see it as a good move.
However, as far as conservation goes, 13 elephants [some of which are subspecies inspecific/hybrids] will do essentially nothing in the grand scheme of elephant conservation. I'm not trying to say "captive reintroduction *never* works", indeed it has worked various times, but in those times, such efforts were not carried out simply individually, by the acts of one man. Kenya has also responded negatively to Damian's insistence of moving his elephants, though this doesn't seem to hinder Damian. This, combined with the future re-wilding of hybrid ratels makes me wonder whether the meerkats of Port Lympne will eventually see Africa some day as well..
Also one thing I would like to mention. From what I heard, Saba the cheetah, one of two re-wilded, inadvertently killed himself after stabbing his neck with a dead antelope's horn. And how did Damian respond to this? Not at all. Damian has not yet responded on behalf of this, and seeing as the other cheetah is seemingly luckily still alive, perhaps it'll be that Damian leaves the spectators to think to themselves what happened to the other cheetah. Similarly, there is no guarantee that even if they get to the [still somewhat enclosed] wild, all 13 of Damian's elephants will survive. And I find it is foolish to gamble on the lives of 13 elephants when they have been living, perhaps better than many zoo-elephants, for Kent essentially all of their lives. I have been to Howletts, and I can say it is a very nicely landscaped zoo [yes, I said it how it is], but perhaps the mindset behind it is curious.
[But then again, I guess gambling was what his parks were built on..!]
