Photo : Patrick Despoix / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Zoo de La Palmyre
La Palmyre Zoo is at Les Mathes, in the Charente-Maritime, in the Coubre forest, near Royan and the Atlantic coast. Founded in 1966 by Claude Caillé, it celebrates its sixtieth anniversary in 2026. Its creator wanted a park where the public approaches animals with respect for their wellbeing, far from the old menageries.
The zoo hosts more than a thousand animals of more than a hundred species: polar bears, giraffes, monkeys, flamingos, elephants and many more. In 1978 the first gorilla in captivity in France was born there.
The zoo takes part in more than sixty European breeding programmes. Its endowment fund Palmyre Conservation supports wildlife protection projects: bats and Kentish plovers of the Arvert peninsula, orangutans and elephants in Borneo, lemurs in Madagascar, gorillas and chimpanzees in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The park can be visited all year round.
