Permission given to the Dolfinarium in Harderwijk to move a rescued Orca to an amusement park in Spain was correct, the Council of State ruled on Wednesday.

The orca, named Morgan, was found in a severely weakened state in the Wadden Sea in 2010. After being nursed back to health in the Netherlands, in 2011 she was shipped to the Loco Parque amusement park on the Spanish island of Tenerife where she now performs tricks for a paying public.

The then junior economic affairs minister Henk Bleker gave the green light for Morgan to be sent to Spain saying there was no guarantee she would be successfully released into the wild.

Alternative

The Council of State said in a statement on Wednesday the move was correct because there was no alternative.

‘Returning the killer whale to the ocean, as proposed by the animal welfare groups in the Morgan Release Plan, was not deemed to be an “alternative, satisfactory solution” because Morgan’s native pod had not been found and she belonged to a population with a highly complex social structure,’ the court said.

Supporters of the orca say she is not being properly looked after in Spain and is constantly being attacked by other orcas.

However, the council of state said that issue was outside its jurisdiction and today’s verdict only dealt with the validity of the export licence granted by Bleeker at the time. ‘Morgan’s present state of health was not the subject of the legal proceedings,’ the court said.

Last weekend, a British newspaper launched a campaign to raise money to try to release Morgan from what it called her ‘Spanish hellhole’.