How does state protection of endangered wildlife unfold, and what sort of ‘animal’ is preserved, when wildness is treated as a crisis of deviance and defiance - foundationally of anthropatriarchy - which will then be managed and controlled by the patriarchal state? This paper interrogates states’ forest department’s management of orphaned wild elephant calves, as well as “problem wild elephants” in Assam, who are captured to be remade as “kumki elephants.” Unique to South Asia, kumkis are captive elephants who are “trained” - a process of profound violence - for specific purposes, including indeed, their own conservation. The modern Indian state, following precolonial forms of wildlife capture and training, assumes the role of an authoritarian patriarchal figure in disciplining deviant elephant wildness. Against the traumas of their potential extinction, these elephants now bear the trauma of their own preservation. This paper asks: against the realities of growing habitat loss, what does it mean for conservation to care for wild species in captivity in ways that honours their wildness as flourishing?