ZooParc de Beauval, Animal park in Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, France.
ZooParc de Beauval is a zoological park in Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, Loir-et-Cher, holding about 35,000 animals on 45 hectares. Its four greenhouses house birds, great apes, sloths, reptiles, manatees and Australasian species, while three plains show African savannah herbivores such as giraffes and white rhinos, African elephants and Asian herbivores including Indian rhinos and Malayan tapirs.
Françoise Delord opened a bird park at the Beauval lieu-dit in 1980 with 1,500 to 2,000 birds in aviaries along the Traine-Feuilles stream. In 1989 it became a zoological park with its first mammals, and in 1991 the arrival of the white tigers Gorby and Raïssa raised admissions from 70,000 to 150,000. The park has exceeded 1,600,000 annual visitors since 2019.
The park takes its name from the lieu-dit Beauval, where Françoise Delord opened a bird park in 1980 on both banks of the Traine-Feuilles, a small tributary of the Cher. Its first white tigers, Gorby and Raïssa, arrived in 1991, bought for 100,000 dollars from Robert Baudy in Florida, and annual admissions rose from 70,000 to 150,000 that year.
Eight free parking areas around the site offer space for motorhomes and bicycles as well as accessible spots. The different zones spread across the entire grounds and require a full day for a complete walk-through.
Beauval was the first zoo in France to show white tigers, Gorby and Raïssa, bought in 1991 for 100,000 dollars from Robert Baudy's Rare Feline Breeding Center in Center Hill, Florida. That year admissions rose from 70,000 to 150,000. The pair were supposedly Siberian tigers with some Bengal hybridisation.
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