FROM A TOURIST POINT OF VIEW

Welcome to Planète Sauvage (Wild Planet)

By Seraphine Mbanefo Nwankwo

It trully looked different, smelt different and felt very different. I kept wondering why a day so simple like everyother day in the summer could feel, look and even smell differently. 

The atmosphere could be likened to the day a bride is taken to the altar by her groom. Yes, excitement, that is exactly the feeling. Excitement of venturing into a new world, a new life style, a new family, surely makes it different for a bride. Trying to figure out why the day appeared unique, we packed our picnic box and small nap mats as we drove to the mysterous park zoo land of wild animals and beautiful nature.

Welcome to Planète Sauvage, a massive historical zoo located in the Alpes at Port Saint Père in the Loire Atlantique region, just 15minutes drive from Nantes, West of France. No doubt discovering a world of wild and beautiful creatures such as we would learn of Planète Sauvage surely evokes the kind of excitement a Bride feels on the day she says ‘I do’.

Planète Sauvage is a park as well as a natural Zoo for mostly wild animals. The Zoo officially opened its doors to the public in 1992 and gradually evolved through the years that followed with several major and remarkable changes, with the sole objective of meeting respected European standards of running wildlife zoo.

The Zoo stretches across a total landscape of about 80 hectars upon which holds 1000 animals of roughly 250 assorted species. On entering the park, we came face to face with Zoo guides and personelle, who first received us warmly while explaining a few rules we must comply to in order to avoid accidents. To savor the excitement of the parc on our visit, we had the option of being carefully secured and chauffered in a 4*4 heavily caged mini truck manned by the zoo personelle or drive our private cars with doors firmly locked and windows secured firmly while of course riding behind the truck. It is usually fun though to be chauffered in the 4x4 mini truck while driving through the 10 kilometre landspace very close to the animals.

Within the 15 parks across 60 hectares of land, being the larger part of the park ushered us into the world of girafes, lions, wild wolves, bears, elephants, tigers, cheetahs, white rhinocerous, hippotamous, deer, and antelopes. The park showcases also 150 newborn per year making it one of the largest animal breeding parks in Europe.

Planète Sauvage also historically known as the African Safari with its 15 big parks of several hectares each, has around its grassland water points for the animals, or sometimes more species of herbivores in order to co-habit these animals according to their perculiar exigences and sometimes the continents they are drawn from, as most of them were taken from 5 continents.

The continents are notably, Asia, Australia, Europe, America and Africa. From Asia for instance, we have two asiatic breeds one of which represents asian ungulates such as yaks, nilgauts, chital and hydropotes while the other represents 10 tigers sharing an espace of about 3 acres including a built in pond. The second continent, Australia showcases animals such as the red kangaroos, wallabies and emus bennett. Then, there is also the European continent, with a large forest park of one hectare which houses a pack of gray wolves.

The African continent, very rich in its tropical climate has several representations of cohabiting giraffes, white rhinos, zebra chapman, watussi of oxen, hippos, ostriches, antelopes and more than 200 from different species of eland, scimitar-horned oryx, blesbok, addax, waterbuck, springbok, impala, blue wild beast, kudu large and lechwe of sitatungas. The lion park with jungle rails, train and tipis, referring to the legend of Tsavo lions, ten lions are installed on an area of 3hectares and a half. The cheetahs section of the park, the largest facility in france for this species, since their enclosure takes up an area of 5hectares. Four giant african elephants are evolving on a grassy medow of 6 hectares, making it the largest facility of this kind in France. Their enclosure has a pool of 5000m2, rocks and tree trunks that serve as enrichement, a sort relaxation for the elephants, born between 1966 and 1989, all being wild and caught in Africa.

The American continent offers 2 areas, the first been a 7hectare prairie where bison, llams and rheas co-habit. The second part holds a large enclosed paddock where many black bears baribals could be seen. A high rock landscaped with a waterfall provides the main enrichment for the bears. In 2006, an interesting cohabitation was included which is the 5 big horn sheep now living with these carnivores. It also has an area for sheep, where bears have no access to.

After a slow and steady one and half hours tour of the carnivorous part of the park, we were offered a 15 to 30 minutes break to refresh ourselves with what we have locked up in our picnic boxes. We, then walked towards the aquatic part of the park, an enclosure which had a resemblance of what you might call a mini stadium to enjoy the Dolphine spectacle. That was just the best part of the day’s excitement, having to watch the dolphin follow simple whistle led instructions to display various mesmerizing stunts to the cheers of the already andrenaline peaked public. Simply a marvel to behold!

At this junction, it is important to note that one remarkable feature about Planète Sauvage is the fact that it is one out of the three major parks in metroplitan area of France which has the great Dolphinarium, the Marine City.

The Marine City was created in November 2008, with a large group of dolphins swimming in the heart of the four pools. Planète Sauvage or Wild Planet as one might want to translate in English is a park rich in its research programs, one of which concerns the lifestyle of dolphines. A group of scientists and researchers on animal and human ethology from the University of Rennes and CNRS partner with the park to study communication in dolphins.

The historical tale behind Planète Sauvage

In the year 1992 African Safari also known today as Planete Sauvage was opened with roughly 500 animals presented to the public on a 140 acre of land. The African Safari was the concept of a man called Dany Laurent. Meanwhile his wife Monique was also at the same time reconstructing and maintaining another park ‘La Boissiere du Dore which was established in the late eighties (1984), at Maine-et-Loire one of the regions in Pays de la Loire, a facility presently managed by Sébastien Laurent, their son. 

A certain human zoo known as the African Village was created in 1994. Planète Sauvage (Wild Planet) launched an African village with men, women and children who were of Ivorian origine. These men, women and children were contracted to live in the ZOO side by side the animals and move around naked whenever the weather was agreable. These human beings who signed a contract with the Ministry of Tourism Ivory coast, are mostly those without work visa, no form of remuneration, except compensation which was paid to the original village. The village was later given the name ‘Bamboula Village’ as a result of a brand of cake promoted by Saint-Michel. However, the nature of this bizzare zoo of humaines met lots of criticsm and a very strong indignation which fortunately brought to end this neo-colonial project, as part of the lineage of human zoos colonial exhibitions in which humans were exposed to animal side. Today this part of the park is called the bush village. There right in the centre of the village, you would find wild reptiles such the crocodiles and other cold-blooded animals.

The African Safari also Planète Sauvage (Wild Planet) in 1998 took and still takes the dimension of a wildlife tourism park. It was also in this same year 1998 that the aquatic complex was constructed alongside the areas hosting the lions, regardless of the initial refusal of the Ministry of Environment on the importation request for four bottlenose dolphins. The refusal as i understand was mainly based on the lack of scientific goal of the project being in itself not-compliant with the Act of 25 July 1995 which regulates the capture, transfer, and use or marketing of such aquatic creatures.

However, in 2005 Dany Laurent left the management of the park after Planète Sauvage was bought over by the parks division leisure group.  
Moreover between the year 2006 and 2014, the park exprienced several changes with the creation of a safari camp, a special adventure that invites visitors to sleep in a tent among the animals (herbivores of course!), the arrival of two bottlenose dolphins (Thea and Amtan) from the Dolphinarium Harderwijk in Netherlands where they were born and taken captives. Later on there was the arrival of three other dolphins (Cecil, PEOs and Mininos) from the dolphinarium Parc Asterix, also born and taken captives from the Asterix Park and Sea World Orlando. These turn of events thereby led to the opening of the dolphinarium Marine City in Planète Sauvage with five dolphins in 2009.

Today, one of the outstanding additions in the park is the birth of a healer day when a visitor to the park can enjoy a day with an animal keeper.

Also another attraction for kids is the Kirikou, the cartoon character of Michel Ocelot, this 2014. Meanwhile, earlier this year, sometime in March three new dolphins (Kite, Spat and Parel) from the Dolphinarium Harderwijk in Netherlands and the dolphinarium Zoo Münster in Germany were introduced into the park.