Posted on 01/11/2016 11:42:16 AM PST by Citizen Zed
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is ending its elephant acts a year and a half early, and will retire all of its touring elephants in May.
The move comes amid increasing scrutiny of circus elephant acts with local governments passing "anti-circus" and "anti-elephant" ordinances in response to concerns over animal cruelty.
The circus's parent company, Feld Entertainment, told The Associated Press exclusively that all of the iconic elephants will be permanently retired to the company's 200-acre Center for Elephant Conservation, located between Orlando and Tampa.
The company announced in March that it would retire the full herd to the center by 2018. But once officials began planning details, they realized "we could actually do this a lot sooner" because building the new structures to house the retiring elephants didn't take as long as they originally thought, said Alana Feld, Ringling's executive vice president and show producer. It costs about $65,000 yearly to care for each elephant, Feld said.
Without animals, you might as well go see Cirque du Soleil, which honestly I enjoyed more anyway.
As the Elephants go so goes the Circus!!!
So, I guess Hillary will have no employment after the election??
Sad.
Sure she will, if all goes well, she'll be making license plates.
Replace them with fat liberals like Michael Moore and Rosie.
They live in a circus and belong in cages anyway.
And still the circus midgets remain ignored.
Those elephants get treated a LOT better than the midgets.
I’ve seen many documentaries about circus midget abuse.
#midgetlivesmatter
They said "Elephants" not "Rhinos!"
And I think zoos should be eliminated. They're just baby factories anyways.
Did the elephants offend Muslims?
My first circus was 1953, Denver Co! Ringling Bros! We went out and saw how the elephants were used to put up the tent!
Years later I found that circus people refer to us spectators watching the tent go up as “Lot Lice”.
I can live with that! I got to see the elephants at 6 years old!
As a kid I loved going to the circus, loved the elephant acts. Sad to see this change.
My $.02
www.circusfire1944.com
This was my first circus I ever did see and it all burnt up-luckily my Mom, my sister and I escaped. My Mom could run pretty fast with 2 kids.
I took the family to see the Ringling tour last fall, figuring that since I happened to have the time, I’d go right then, so we could still see the elephants. I’m glad I didn’t wait, because now they’re gone for good.
Not much point now, since pretty much every other type of animal act can be seen in other types of venue, and the human acts are almost certainly not up to Cirque Du Soleil levels.
They announced this over a year ago.
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