Pierre Gay has been director general of Zoo des Sables d’Olonne since 1998 and director general of Bioparc Zoo de Doué-la-Fontaine since 1973. He has spent his career dedicated to conservation and reintroduction programs, as well as overseeing the two zoological parks in France.
Gay participated in and organized the first EAZA Conservation Forum and also launched Nature Projects, which has been running and supporting NGOs all over the world since 2001.
In 1986, he went to India to discover the work of the Snow Leopard Trust with its founder Helen Freeman. She told him that “if we want to save nature, we must take into account and help local communities”, something that has resonated with Gay and with the in-situ conservation strategy of Bioparc. He went on to travel to Madagascar in 1999, where he supported the first actions of the NGO Antongil Conservation in protecting the rainforest in the northeast of the island.
Gay also travelled to Niger to save the last herd of West African giraffes and worked with Heinz Plenge in Peru on the spectacled bear conservation project. Since the end of the 1970s, Gay has taken it upon himself to exchange, discover and learn what is being done elsewhere, and how biodiversity is protected, conserved and even saved. In 2006, EAZA gave him an award for his commitment to the protection of nature.
“By presenting endangered species, Pierre sought to develop our field of action beyond the Bioparc and thus complete the circle between presence in captivity and support for wild populations, while including the natural environment and local populations in these projects,” said one nominator.
“For over 30 years, Pierre has thus enabled the community of zoos and aquaria, particularly in Europe but also worldwide, to consider and develop conservation from an innovative angle that makes sense today.”