Wolfgang Kiessling (entrepreneur)

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Wolfgang Kiessling (born September 7, 1937 in Gera ) is the founder, owner and general manager of Loro Parques in Puerto de la Cruz on the Canary Island of Tenerife .

Life

The son of a merchant family from Cologne is a Salem student and gained his first experience in America and Canada before he took over the management of a charter flight company in Frankfurt, which mainly flew to Tenerife.

In 1972, Kiessling founded Loro Parque on Tenerife, initially as a pure parrot park. Gradually the park opened up to other species. Kiessling also operates the adventure and fun facility and water park Siam Park in Costa Adeje in the south of the island and the Hotel Botanico in Puerto de la Cruz. With a total of around 800 employees, it is also the largest employer on Tenerife.

Kiessling is strongly committed to nature and species protection, so in 1994 he founded the Loro Parque Foundation , which is a non-profit organization committed to the conservation of endangered parrot species and their habitats worldwide. The greatest successes were the world's first breeding of the endangered blue- throated macaw and the establishment of a population of the highly endangered Learara in human care. Kiessling is also working to establish a protected area for marine mammals in the Macaronesian marine area. He also warned of the consequences of man-made climate change.

In 2008, Kiessling opened another tourist attraction in the south of Tenerife, the Siam Park, an adventure water world that is home to the largest wave swimming pool in Europe.

In 2018, the large Poema del Mar ("Poem of the Sea") aquarium was opened in Gran Canaria and is one of the largest aquariums in the world.

A future project is likely to be an expansion of Loro Parque, with additional parking spaces to be created in 2020. A Siam Park on Gran Canaria has also been planned for years, but the building permit has not yet been granted. In 2020, a wind power plant is also to be built on Gran Canaria, through which Kiessling wants to operate its companies in a climate-neutral manner.

He is married to Brigitte Kiessling and has two children.

criticism

The shows with dolphins and killer whales (orcas) shown in Loro Parque were criticized by animal rights activists. Killer whales were injured and there were incidents involving animal trainers, one of which was fatal.

honors and awards

Kiessling is an honorary citizen of the city of Puerto de la Cruz and the island of Tenerife and consul general of the Kingdom of Thailand . In 1986 he received the gold medal of the bird magazine Gefiederte Welt for the first breeding of the blue-throated macaw Ara glaucogularis .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Loro Parque Fundacion
  2. ↑ a b Wochenblatt: Wolfgang Kiessling is slowly losing interest. In: wochenblatt.es. January 22, 2020, accessed on June 3, 2020 (German).
  3. ↑ Poema del Mar in Las Palmas - attractions, prices, information. In: Travel Guide for the Canary Islands. September 12, 2018, accessed June 3, 2020 (German).
  4. ↑ Loro Parque Tenerife. Whale and Dolphin Conservation Forum. Retrieved February 14, 2019
  5. ↑ Free Morgan: Sunday People and Born Free launch appeal to help scarred and wounded captive killer whale . Mirror, April 19, 2014. Retrieved February 14, 2019
  6. ↑ Free the whales! . Spiegel TV, accessed February 13, 2019 (video)
  7. ↑ Franz Robiller, [George Archibald ...]: The great lexicon of bird care . 2nd Edition. tape 1 : A-K. Ulmer, Stuttgart (Hohenheim) 2003, ISBN 3-8001-3195-1 .
personal data
SURNAME Kiessling, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur in Spain
DATE OF BIRTH September 7, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Gera