Dutch zookeeper with nearly 40 years at Beekse Bergen dies after Saturday leopard attack

A keeper who spent nearly four decades at the Beekse Bergen safari park in the southern Netherlands died Tuesday, Oct. 27, from injuries suffered in a leopard attack on Saturday, Oct. 24. The park announced her death in a statement made together with her family.

Her name has been withheld in line with Dutch privacy law. The park said she started there at 17 and worked at the Hilvarenbeek site, with only a few short interruptions, for nearly 40 years.

What happened Saturday

The woman was in an indoor facility with two male Persian leopards when she was attacked. The animals had been brought inside because of stormy weather. She suffered serious wounds to her head and neck.

She was able to call colleagues on a walkie-talkie to say she had been hurt. An ambulance and a trauma helicopter were dispatched to the park at around 11 a.m. local time.

She underwent emergency surgery. Her condition worsened Sunday evening, and the park said then that it did not expect her to survive.

There are no CCTV cameras inside the enclosure. What happened in those minutes has not been established.

The open question: why was she inside?

Staff are normally kept away from the leopards. The park has said entering the space with the animals is highly unusual, and an investigation is underway to determine why the keeper was in the enclosure with them.

The park has said an independent investigation will be launched to establish the circumstances. DutchNews reports that the Dutch labour inspectorate has also opened an investigation into the incident.

Neither the park nor investigators have said whether a safety protocol was broken, whether a door or access point failed, or whether the keeper had a reason to be in the enclosure that day. Those are the facts the inquiries are meant to settle.

The leopards stay

The park will not euthanise either animal. A spokesperson told local broadcaster Omroep Brabant that the leopards were behaving naturally. "They are, and remain, predators," the spokesperson said.

Martin van Hees, the park's head of animal care, put it more bluntly, according to the Daily Star. "We are not going to do anything with the leopard," he said. "The animal cannot help it."

That is a common outcome after a keeper is hurt in a zoo enclosure. Whether anything changes for the two leopards will likely depend on what the investigations find about how the keeper came to be in the space.

The park's response

"Her passing deeply affects us all, and we sympathize intensely with her family, friends, and loved ones," the park said. It added that its focus is on supporting her family and her colleagues, and asked for privacy for them.

Beekse Bergen said it will set up a memorial location where guests and staff can leave condolences.

Not the first keeper killed by a big cat

Big cats have killed keepers at other facilities in recent years. Last year, a zookeeper in Thailand was killed by a lion after stepping out of his vehicle at a safari park.

In October 2024, lions in Crimea killed a keeper after a door inside their enclosure was left unlocked. A 55-year-old keeper at Zurich's zoo was killed by a Siberian tiger in 2020.

In 2018, a lion escaped its enclosure and killed a recent college graduate during a routine cleaning at a North Carolina conservatory. In April 2016, a Malayan tiger killed a keeper at Florida's Palm Beach Zoo after a door that was supposed to be locked was left open.

In several of those cases, a failed barrier or a locking lapse was later identified. Whether anything like that applies at Beekse Bergen is unknown.

What comes next

The park's independent investigation and the reported labour inspectorate inquiry are the next steps. Neither has announced a timeline.

The central question for both is the same one the park raised itself: why a 40-year veteran, who knew the animals and the rules better than almost anyone, was in an enclosure with two leopards that staff are normally kept away from.