In December 2024, Marine Connection sent a letter supported by 33 organisations to the French Government urging them to retire Wikie and her son Keijo, the two remaining orcas at Marineland, France, to a seaside sanctuary and not to Loro Parque in the Canary Islands. We also commended Mme Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition, Energy, the Climate and Risk Prevention, for rejecting the option of exporting the two orcas to Japan’s Kobe Suma Sea World facility.
Margaux Dodds lead for the organisation’s anti-captivity programme comments “To date we have not had a response to our letter and I am deeply disappointed to learn from colleagues at the Whale Sanctuary project that their application, submitted in April 2024, to move Wikie and Keijo to a more natural environment in Nova Scotia has been rejected by the French Ministry, after the project could not meet the scheduling requirements of Marineland, which ceased its operations on January 5, 2025. Why has it taken the Ministry ten months to respond to the application, questions must be answered”.
Due to their poor track record, Loro Parque Zoo should be rejected as a relocation site for Wikie and Keijo. There have been several orca deaths there in the last few years, 29-year-old male, Keto passed away in November 2024 and three other orcas died at the facility between March 2021 and September 2022, however concerningly it now appears that Wikie and Keijo could be moved there in the not too distant future. Although challenging when fighting for captive dolphins and whales, we can never give up hope – if we do, all is lost for the animals.
Read our letter to the French Ministry here
