HALIFAX — A non-profit group in Nova Scotia has failed in its bid to bring two orcas from southern France to live in a seaside refuge that is being built for whales retired from marine theme parks.

The Whale Sanctuary Project issued a statement confirming the French government has decided to send the killer whales — Wikie and her son Keijo — to Spain’s Loro Parque zoo on Tenerife Island.

The decision marks a major setback for the privately funded group, which announced plans to build a 40-hectare, floating enclosure near Wine Harbour, N.S., more than six years ago.

The group issued a statement saying the French government had agreed with a request from the whales’ owners at the now-closed Marineland park in Antibes to transfer the whales to the zoo on the Canary Islands off western Africa.

Marineland Antibes was closed in January 2025 to comply with a 2021 French law that bans keeping whales and dolphins captive for entertainment purposes.

In December, the French government had said the planned facility in Nova Scotia was its preferred site for relocating the whales, but the minister responsible for the move stepped back from that statement last month.

At that time, Mathieu Lefèvre, minister responsible for ecological transition, said the two whales were the private property of Marineland Antibes, where the owners had said they were opposed to sending the pair to Canada.

Charles Vinick, CEO of the Whale Sanctuary Project, issued a statement saying the decision would be devastating for the whales. He said the 2021 French law was intended to end the use of whales and dolphins for entertainment and captive breeding.

“The law explicitly prohibits these practices,” he said. “However, Loro Parque continues to rely on performance-based programming and breeding, particularly following the deaths of four orcas at the facility since 2019.”

“Transferring Wikie and Keijo into that environment risks perpetuating the very system the law was designed to phase out.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 15, 2026.

The Canadian Press