"Geno-circus"?

"What will happen for me is a genocide. We are talking about 'genocircus'. Our animals will die but also a whole profession" protested William Kervich, director of the Cirque Royal, whose family has already suffered from the cancellation of shows for almost a year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In his circus, wild animals are numerous: lions, white tiger, hippopotamus, camels, wallabies or parrots.

"We love our animals, and especially our animals love us. They are close to humans and do not suffer from any form of confinement. We cannot release them into the wild, it is impossible," says William Kervich.

The profession expressed its anger in the capital at the end of January.

"I think it's a real witch hunt, it's easier to kill the circus world than to tackle bullfighting for example," he concludes.

A five-star retreat

So these animals, where are they going to go?

At Patrick Violas, at the head of the zoo refuge de la Tanière, near Chartres, animals from all walks of life are taken in.

"The animals that arrive here are animals seized for the great majority, animals in circus retirement, or that individuals abandon. We also have animals from laboratories, mostly primates," explains Patrick Violas.

"Here, we repair the animals physically and administratively. Our goal is to replace them as much as possible".

Patrick Violas has invested all his fortune, resulting from a first life in mobile telephony.

Closed due to a pandemic, the zoo must in theory welcome the public to be self-financing.

But with the future law on wild animals in circuses, we will have to push the walls, build new enclosures, new buildings and for that, La Tanière is asking the State for funds, around thirty million euros.

"Nobody has the possibility of receiving 500 or 600 wild animals. There are a lot of animals to recover and there will be more and more", concludes Patrick Violas.

Back to the wild?

In front of our camera, she nibbles a juicy apple, fed by her caretaker.

This Seychelles land turtle lives in 15m², under a heating lamp in the old Pont Scorff zoo in Morbihan, a thousand leagues from its natural environment.

The place, now closed to the public, was recently bought by animal activists, the NGO Rewild.

Their idea is simple: "Re-savage" animals that can be, send them back to nature, following a rehabilitation process.

"For us, the priority is to send these animals back to their original latitudes".

Giraffes, hippos, lions ... "For almost all the African animals who are here, we hope that it is the last winter in Brittany", believes Lamya Essemlali of Rewild, she who has also been active for years at Sea Shepherd , to defend marine animals.

Of course, not all animals can be "re-savaged", it is the case of white tigers for example, but "there is a dogma very anchored in France which is to say that captive animals or those born captive cannot will never be able to survive in their natural environment. There are thousands of counter-examples across the world, "argues Lamya Essemlali, for whom sanctuaries in Africa can also be a fallback solution when the return to the state totally wild is not possible.

She does not hesitate to compare circuses or zoos to colonial exhibitions of the 19th century, where "natives" were exposed to the public.

For Lamya Essemlali, the future law should go even further: "Prohibiting wild animals in traveling circuses is really the minimum subsistence level. We wonder why we would continue to allow them in fixed circuses and why continue. to authorize animal shows in zoos ".

And to put into perspective: "The commercial exploitation of wild animals, captives, is a thing of the past. I honestly think that in 20 years or so, everyone will be shocked to see this."

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