The Serpentarium, located in a commercial space right on the touristic seawall promenade which runs right behind the beach along much of the Belgian coast, including much of Blankenberge, first opened on September 12th, 1998. Until 2009 it was privately owned and run, after which it was taken over by the Royal Zoological Society of Antwerp (Koninklijke Maatschappij voor Dierkunde Antwerpen or KMDA in Dutch), which also owns and runs the large zoos Zoo Antwerpen and Zoo Planckendael. At its peak it was quite popular and got over 50.000 visitors per year.
Sadly the facility closed in mid-March of 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and was never able to reopen in 2020 or 2021, as its narrow enclosed corridors could not accommodate adequate adherence to necessary Covid-19 safety regulations such as social distancing and ventilation.
On May 12th, 2021 it was announced that sadly the facility will remain closed forever, and that all the animals (over 200 amphibians, reptiles and invertebrates in total) will be rehomed to Zoo Antwerpen, Zoo Planckendael or other zoological facilities by the end of this year. Along with the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic persistent high overhead costs, challenging infrastructure, high costs needed to make the facility fully compliant with the conditions for a new environmental permit and an uncertain future were cited as reasons for the decision to close the facility.
I visited the Serpentarium a total of six times during its existence, my visit in February of 2017 turning out to sadly have been my final. I posted pictured from my last three visits (2009, 2014 and 2017) in the gallery.
The facility was small but I did like it despite not being a huge herp guy, and the collection was quite impressive given the space (see link below). It is not like the closure of this small facility is a massive disaster for the zoological community and zoo fans, but it is always disappointing when facilities have to close before their time has truly come (or really at all), although the future of this facility seems to have been questionable even without Covid-19, which sadly seems to have given it the final blow.
Linked below are a thread in which Snowleopard posted a species list from his 2019 visit (probably relatively unchanged since) and an English article.
With the recent announcement of the closure I decided to go through some of my old photos and post them on here to document a now closed facility that will soon be totally gone, to remember it and to honor the people who put their time and effort into this facility. Some of the older images are sadly necessarily of lower quality than my current photos. I hope they are still decent enough, and I hope these postings were appreciated here at ZooChat.
