This past week, we all read the final decision of French Minister of Ecological Transition Mathieu Lefèvre’s approval of Marineland Antibes’ request to transfer Wikie and Keijo to Loro Parque zoo in Spain.
All this in spite of his former statements and the position he outlined in the meeting held in Paris in February. So now mother and son will shortly be trafficked to a concrete tank in a zoo in the Spanish Canary Islands with a poor animal (and human) welfare history and characterized by unwise husbandry decisions, lack of transparency, and the death of four young orcas in the past five years.
Had the Minister kept his word and supported his own nation’s law to ban cetacean captivity for entertainment and breeding, Wikie and Keijo would have had a different future – a much brighter future. Now they will never know what they came so close to having.
Mother and son will shortly be trafficked to a concrete tank in a zoo in the Spanish Canary Islands.
The time, expense, and amount of work it takes to create a coastal sanctuary for whales is not for the faint-hearted. And we would not have been ready to receive Wikie and Keijo immediately. But we are getting there and we think that it was well worth the government waiting for – for the sake of these two individuals who have been through so much. Nothing worth doing is easy and quick, but the result is life changing. The marine parks and zoos know all too well that the first cetacean sanctuary will sound a death-knell for their cruel industry. And they have fought tooth-and-nail for years to prevent this new future for captive cetaceans from coming to fruition. They fought hard to deny Wikie and Keijo the chance for a better future in sanctuary and refused to even engage in discussion with us. And so, they get to further ruin the lives of two more intelligent, sensitive beings who should be in the ocean living as orcas, not as circus clowns.
But the captivity industry should be on notice that we who are engaged in creating this seismic shift in our relationship to cetaceans will not give up. Just as there are already sanctuaries for elephants, great apes, big cats and other animals, we will create cetacean sanctuaries and children will finally learn why these creatures can only thrive in the ocean. In the longer future, there will be little need for sanctuaries because authentic sanctuaries do not allow breeding and therefore do not perpetuate captivity. Wild animals like dolphins and whales will live where they are supposed to live: in the wild and in control of their own lives.
We are so grateful to everyone who, in so many ways, supported our efforts to bring Wikie and Keijo to sanctuary. Please know that we will continue our efforts to rescue captive whales from the impoverishment of concrete tanks and bring them to a well-deserved life under human care in a natural ocean setting.
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