Yohann Logiou, director d’Apache Terre d’Accueil.

      Let me tell you why my father and I started the Apache Land of Welcome association. From a young age, I was born in zoos. Every year, we spent our holidays touring France, visiting parks.

When I was 10 years old, I no longer visited zoos as a tourist, but rather as a real expert of the enclosures.

When I was 13, I spent a summer working at the Pont-Scorff zoo, where most of the employees were my father’s students. For my third year internship, I had the opportunity to live a unique experience: a total immersion in the zoo of La Haute-Touche. I was totally independent, living alone in the heart of the zoo, where I listened to the animals cry at night.

When I was 16, my father bought the Amazonia park and that’s when I started doing parrot shows. I was alone on stage with my parrots, my father being in the bleachers, as speaker. But very soon, he joined me on stage! During all my school holidays, we performed in front of more than 1,000 people a day. Our work even attracted the attention of TF1, who invited us to the show Bêtes de scène when I was 18.

            In 2009, my father’s park had to close because of constant pressure from the profession, which prevented him from continuing in this environment. It was at this time that we decided to go to Guadeloupe to set up a Biodôme project. Unfortunately, an elected representative to submit our project without our agreement but being unable to manage such a project, it did not take place. On the other hand, a French zoo there then realized in our place. The project was viable in Guadeloupe thanks to the climate, but in France, you can imagine the cost of heating...

We decide to go to Saint-Martin, still in the West Indies. We were supposed to take over the zoo on the Dutch side, but Cyclone Irma hit hard. We secured all the animals and, miraculously, we did not lose any of them during the cyclone. However, as the zoo is located in a sensitive area, it was quickly looted. We decided, with the association, to evacuate all the animals. I was a keeper of a villa, and that’s where we made aviaries to secure the parrots, with the help of the Dutch army.

As time passed, and our food reserves began to decrease, we decided to send the parrots to Curaçao. Only the babies we raised for free flight stayed with us, including Apache.

               After that, I moved to Saint-Barthélemy for post-cyclone reconstruction. We wanted to bring our parrots home so I could continue flying with them. However, an unforeseen event occurred: our parrots being Dutch, when requesting transfer to the French authorities, they seized them under the pretext of trafficking in wild animals and unauthorized medical practices. Veterinarians asked us to chip parrots when no one else was trained to do so. At trial the judge asked us to forget our parrots, assuring that he would erase the file. This is what happened. A real theft. Feed the parks of Guadeloupe with parrots trained for free flight for free. Today, my parrots including Apache are locked in a cage of 2m by 4.

In 2024, we made the decision to create Apache Welcome Land. A way to pay tribute to those who have accompanied us throughout this journey, and to change mentalities, change the laws, fight so that animals are no longer sacrificed on the altar of human greed.