The most recent shipment from Loro Parque to Kyiv Zoo was 5,000 meters of galvanized mesh.
Not food, not medicine. Fencing wire. It is one of the most requested materials by zoos in Ukraine, because it is what you build an aviary out of when the one you had is gone.
Three years and counting
The support has been running since 2022. Loro Parque set it out in a statement on May 6, 2026:
- Kyiv Zoo: 5,000 meters of galvanized mesh, the most recent delivery
- Kyiv Zoo, earlier: a truck carrying 20,000 euros of specialized parrot feed, routed through Berlin Zoo and the feed manufacturer Versele-Laga
- Feldman Ecopark, Kharkiv: 20,000 euros in food donations
- Ukraine’s Wildlife Rescue Center: 1.5 tonnes of feed, plus tyres for its ambulances
Tyres for wildlife ambulances is the detail that tells you somebody asked what was actually needed rather than deciding what to send.
“esta ayuda responde al compromiso de Loro Parque con las instituciones que, incluso en medio de la guerra, siguen trabajando para proteger a los animales y garantizar su cuidado”
this aid answers to Loro Parque’s commitment to the institutions that, even in the middle of a war, continue working to protect animals and guarantee their care
Wolfgang Kiessling, president of Loro Parque, in a statement translated from Spanish
The problem nobody plans for
A zoo cannot evacuate. Staff can leave, visitors stop coming, and the animals stay where they are and eat every day regardless.
Ukrainian zoos have spent three years running on that arithmetic, with keepers sleeping on site through shelling, feed supply chains cut, and enclosures damaged. Specialized parrot feed is not something you improvise, and it is not something a zoo under bombardment can order.
“se trata de uno de los materiales mas demandados para este tipo de instalaciones, ya que permite crear espacios funcionales y adecuados para el cuidado de aves en procesos de recuperacion”
it is one of the most in-demand materials for this kind of facility, since it allows the creation of functional spaces suitable for caring for birds in recovery
Mike Jordan, zoological director of Loro Parque, in a statement translated from Spanish
Kiessling’s summary of why a park in the Canary Islands is shipping fencing to Kyiv is one line: collaboration between zoos is fundamental to animal welfare.
Cooperation between institutions is normally invisible from the visitor side, showing up only in things like the five-year search that produced Amur leopard cubs at Korkeasaari. This is the same network doing something harder.
Source: Loro Parque. Quotations translated from the Spanish.
