WASHINGTON, December 26 (RIA Novosti) –If the Los Angeles City Council votes to ban elephants from performing within city limits, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus may have to avoid bringing “The Greatest Show on Earth” to America’s second biggest city.
“The treatment of elephants in traveling circuses is one of the crueler practices, and it’s time for us to stand up for them,” Paul Koretz, a city council member who sponsored the ban, told the New York Times.
For decades animal welfare groups have condemned the methods used to transport and train elephants as abusive and cruel and that the animals are sometimes mistreated by handlers who hit them over the head with instruments like bullhooks, the Times reported.
The city council is set to vote on two measures early next year, which would prohibit pachyderms from performing in circuses within city limits as well as a ban on the use of bullhooks, a device used to train and control elephants, the Los Angeles Daily News reported.
If the ban is adopted then all circus shows including Ringling Brothers, the longest continuously run circus in the United States, will be forbidden from performing in Los Angeles unless the companies agree to remove elephant acts from their performances, The Times reported.
“This is great news for elephants who are forced to perform in traveling circuses,” Catherine Doyle, director of science, research and advocacy for the Performing Animal Welfare Society, told the Daily News. “Los Angeles considers itself a progressive city, and this will take us to the next level."
Ringling Brothers has argued that it treats all of its circus animals humanely and that inspections made by the Department of Agriculture show proof of the excellent practices it displays when caring for its animals, The Times reported.
Some trainers believe that exposing people to elephants at circuses opens their minds to supporting conservation efforts and “seeing animals up close is one of the main reasons people come to Ringling Brothers,” Stephen Payne, a spokesman for Feld Entertainment, which bought Ringling Brothers in 1967 told The Times.
Los Angeles would not be the first city to ban circus elephants. The Times reported that six southern California cities already have a ban in place.
