A disappearance that will leave behind thousands of memories, but also a final mission for the teams: to ensure the future of the park's some 450 animals and, perhaps, to make the project live again one day at a new site.
Since 1971, generations of children have discovered their first lions, monkeys, giraffes, or birds there. Some returned years later with their own children. Others, now grandparents, have in turn crossed the park's gates with their grandchildren.
On 30 August, this story will come to an end on the historic site.
At 8:00 p.m., the gates of the Fréjus Zoological Park will close. Definitively, this time.
For the teams who work there, as for regular visitors, the deadline necessarily has a special resonance. Because behind the closure of an establishment there are also memories, jobs, family routines and, above all, animals whose new life must now be prepared.
The decision was not made in haste.
In 2024, the land on which the park is located was sold, with a two-year right-of-use reserve. When the new team took over operations in January 2025, its ambition was then to find new land in Fréjus on which to build a completely redesigned park.L'objectif was not to simply move the enclosures and reproduce what already existed elsewhere.The imagined project wanted to give a more important place to education, biodiversity, botany, and transmission, in particular for children and young people.A park designed as a place for discovering living things, but also as a family, fun, and educational space.Research was therefore carried out over many months, in connection with local elected officials. Several avenues were studied.
But none ultimately made it possible to carry out the project within the allotted timeframe. The park must therefore leave its current site.And with it, part of local history will disappear from the Fréjus landscape.
Closing a zoo obviously does not mean pulling down a curtain and emptying the place: Behind the park's gates, some 450 animals still live there. Their future is today one of the main concerns for the teams.
Since the park was taken back over, significant work has been undertaken around their monitoring and care. A veterinarian specializing in wildlife, recognized at national level, in particular supports the teams.
Eight new collaborators were also recruited and trained in the specificities of the different species: feeding, observing behaviors, care, maintaining living spaces, health monitoring, handling, or detecting signs that require veterinary intervention.Work that is sometimes invisible to visitors, but essential today.Because the animals will not go just anywhere.
From 31 August, they will gradually join different zoological establishments in France and Europe. Destinations will be chosen according to the needs of each species, the situation of each animal, and the hosting capacities of the relevant facilities.
Their health records, their habits, their diet, their behavior, and their particular needs will be passed on in order to facilitate their arrival in their new environment.
For keepers, this step will undoubtedly be one of the most difficult.
Rather than making this year a simple ending, the park's management has chosen to make it a final season to share with the public.
Until 30 August, visitors are invited to come back one last time: To see the animals again, to find their way through the park's paths again, and to talk with the keepers.
During the months of July and August, the park is open every day until 8:00 p.m., allowing, in particular, to enjoy the last hours of the day, when temperatures become milder.
On the website and on social media, the teams also want to reveal the behind-the-scenes of this final season: the keepers' work, veterinary care, the history of certain animals, but also the preparations for the future transfers.
Visitors are also invited to share their own photographs, memories, and anecdotes.
Because after more than fifty years, the park's story no longer belongs only to those who work there. It also belongs to those who have visited it.
This closure also takes place in a context where the role of zoological parks in our society is regularly debated.
The Fréjus Zoological Park, for its part, wants to defend a vision based on awareness-raising, education, care, and conservation.
Its teams in particular point out their participation in breeding and conservation programs for threatened species, but also their role in receiving animals that have been seized or held illegally.
The park has also welcomed animals from the world of entertainment and participated in their care as part of changes in legislation on animal welfare.
The management therefore intends to distinguish this mission from that of places where the animal is used as a spectacle.For its leaders, the challenge is now to show that a zoological park can also be a place for learning and discovering living things,helping those who are far from nature to discover it. Behind this reflection there is, in particular, a desire: to allow children to truly meet living things.
"observing an animal in front of you is not quite the same as watching a video on a screen."
For some children living in highly urbanized environments, the zoo can thus be a first encounter with certain species and, more broadly, with the issues related to biodiversity.
It is around this idea that the park's future project was meant to be built.
At the beginning of 2026, the park had started putting in place an educational program called " The Explorations of living things ".
Designed for ten years, from 2026 to 2035, the program was to propose each year a new theme around nature and biodiversity.
The ambition was also to give more space to botany, with the planned creation of a real botanical garden.
The idea was therefore to go beyond the model of a simple animal park in order to create a place devoted more broadly to living things: animals, plants, biodiversity, knowledge, and transmission.
A project that, in the end, will not have been able to see the light of day on the current site.But its designers refuse to consider this ambition as definitively buried.
What if it was ultimately just a goodbye?
Then there will be the memories: Those of children amazed in front of an animal for the first time. Those of families who came to spend a day at the park. Those of the keepers who devoted part of their lives to it. Those of employees, partners, and all those who, in one way or another, helped keep this place going.
And above all, there will be the animals, who will be gradually accompanied to their new places of life.
On Sunday 30 August 2026 at 8:00 p.m., visitors will cross the gates of the Fréjus Zoological Park one last time.
