This is not the blog post that was originally scheduled for today. That one will now publish next week.

With yesterday’s announced cancellation or the Beauvel Zoo’s proposed dolphin complex, which would have provided France’s remaining zoo dolphins a permanent home or a temporary one until a sanctuary solution was available (depending on who you asked and when), I wanted share my thoughts and observations on the matter. These are the notes I quickly jotted down on my flight. They are in no particular order, may feel disjointed, and there might be spelling or grammatical errors.

• The zoo was apparently unable to obtain full funding for the project, including from NGOs and government entities. What we are observing with Beauvel and the sanctuary organizations are flawed business plans that do not meet the needs of the project.
• We are seeing project management that puts animals first, and while that’s certainly a noble idea, perhaps considering these projects as construction first, with welfare being a criteria, but secondary – along with environmental stewardship, community engagement, etc. – might be a better suited plan for multi-million dollar (or Euro) projects of this caliber.
• Welfare should influence the construction, but should be secondary to the needs of getting the project off the ground. Might sound weird – can definitely word this better.
• By committing to later moving their dolphins from Spain to Beauvel in order to get the permits to move them out of Marineland Antibes, Parques Reunidos now has eight of Marineland’s twelve dolphins in a park that it itself owns in a foreign country. The company may have committed to Beauvel, but it never committed to an NGO developed sanctuary.
• Remaining four dolphins, along with two orcas, will all move to Spain after the two belugas and four dolphins from Marineland Niagara are repositioned to Valencia (or possible elsewhere for the dolphins). From a publicity standpoint, only one major “rescue” can take place at a time, otherwise they’re canabalizing on each others’ news cycles.
• From correspondence released by the Spanish CITES authority, along with a review of the decision published by the oversight committee (I think that’s what it was – the government entity LP appealed to), it was clear that the assessment of Loro Parques’ orca facility was done by Spanish CITES on behalf of French CITES authority, which happens to be the Ministry of Ecological Transition, which has approved the transfer of the two orcas.
• The Spanish basically told Loro Parque “We deemed your facility inefficient, but we can’t tell you why because we didn’t do it for us. We did it for the French, so they’re the ones that would have to tell you since that data is legally theirs.”
• I can only assume the French government has shared the Spanish report with LP by now.
• Under EU law, the EU government exporting to another EU member nation is the only one that needs to make a decision. The French have approved these transfers to Spain.
• Not sure why LP delayed taking the orcas in, other than not wanting publicity from the Marineland Niagara rescues to push them out of the news. It could also be a preemptive legal move, waiting to get the Spanish CITES to reverse its report – which is really the French report. And since the French approved, does it matter? Sacré bleu!
• EU precedents are interesting. In March last year, Sea Shepherd France petitioned the Conseil d’État to have the French government declare the Marineland Antibes park as a sanctuary. One month later, the Conseil d’État dismissed the case on grounds that the cetaceans were already protected under EU statutes.
• I find it interesting that both Lamya Essemlali (Sea Shepherd France President) and Paul Watson (notorious ocean pirate in need of an eyepatch and a shoulder parrot) were refloating this make Marineland a sanctuary concept just a few months ago.
• No idea what will become of the dolphins in Spain. Can they be moved to Japan or China? The park in Hainan that Parques Reunidos had an agreement with filed for bankruptcy, so that’s another glitch in the matrix.
• Also, this places Planete Savage, the other French facility currently housing dolphins, in an interesting and unknown situation.
• I keep hearing about decisions being made or needing to be made in “the spirit of the law.” While this could be applied to regions with active restrictive laws, such as Canada or California (there is no national law in the U.S. applicable to states outside California and South Carolina), the ban on cetacean captivity for entertainment and breeding in France does not take effect until December 2026. So that should restrict how “spirit of the law” can currently be applied.
• It is possible that continued lawsuits from NGOs could delay the move past the start date of the ban, which would find the park in legal violation if any cetaceans are still at Marineland Antibes. If that’s the case, would the French government seize the animals and hand them over to one or more NGOs?