“[The beast] has no voice to defend itself. Anakin, we have to be that voice.”
-Senator Padmé Amidala
The tale of the Zillo Beast happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but Senator Amidala’s quote perfectly captures the conservationist sentiment that prevailed here in the U.S. in 1973 when Congress passed the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). As the Star Wars saga’s answer to classic kaiju, the Zillo Beast appeared in two episodes of The Clone Wars, Season Two. While battling a Separatist invasion on the planet Malastare, Republic forces unwittingly unearthed the last known specimen of the legendary Zillo Beasts. After subduing the creature, Palpatine ordered Anakin Skywalker and Mace Windu to transport it to Coruscant for study. How might the broad protections of the ESA apply to a creature as rare as the Zillo Beast?
The Malastare Zillo Beast was an “endling”—the term for the last known individual of a species. As an endling, the beast almost certainly would qualify as an “endangered” species, the most at-risk ESA listing classification reserved for wildlife species that are “in danger of extinction.” 16 U.S.C. § 1532(6). This listing category would entitle the beast to the highest level of species conservation protections under the ESA, which prohibit hunting, capturing, and transporting of specimens. 16 U.S.C. § 1538(a)(1). So technically, the removal of the beast from Malastare to Coruscant would violate the ESA and the Jedi could face civil and criminal fines and possibly even a short prison sentence.
However, the ESA provides some limited exceptions to endangered species protections. One exception allows the federal government to issue a permit for the capture and transportation of endangered species for “scientific purposes or to enhance the propagation or survival of the affected species, including . . . acts necessary for the establishment and maintenance of experimental populations.” 16 U.S.C. § 1539(a)(1)(A).
And in fact, after the beast escapes, rampages through Coruscant, and is ultimately destroyed, Palpatine gives a sinister order to clone the Zillo Beast for his dark, secret purposes. This order was the last time the beast was mentioned in The Clone Wars thus far, but in a series with “clone” in the title, it seems very likely that cloning is a viable option for “enhancing the survival of the species” in Star Wars. Granted, here on Earth, cloning technology is not sufficiently advanced to reliably clone animals, and the ESA does not contemplate cloning as a method of species recovery.
But perhaps Palpatine’s cloning program has come to fruition with a new experimental population of Zillo Beasts. In the Star Wars: Age of Resistance – Kylo Ren #1 comic, the new Supreme Leader battles and kills a Zillo Beast on a remote Outer Rim world. Maybe this encounter indicates that Zillo Beasts have recovered as a species thanks to Palpatine’s clone-conservation efforts. On the other hand, if that Outer Rim creature was itself an endling, perhaps Kylo has wiped Zillo Beasts from the galaxy… again? Now more than ever—both in Star Wars and on our planet—strong environmental legal protections are important to stemming the devastating loss of plant and animal species caused by habitat destruction, climate change, and the occasional rampaging Kylo Ren.
