Performing pachyderms: Animal magic... or just cruelty?
Animal activists are outraged by the revival of a big-top spectacle
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Pressure is mounting on ministers to act to prevent the return of more animal shows
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It is more than a decade since elephants were last brought into Britain to caper for paying audiences. But today hundreds of circus-goers are expected to pack a big top in Nottinghamshire to witness the controversial spectacle of performing pachyderms again.
Billed by organisers as a "glamorous, artistic and tender presentation", the arrival of the first new circus elephants on home soil since 1998 has dismayed campaigners and caused concern over the plight of these majestic beasts.
Animal welfare activists say they will be out in force to protest at the opening of the Great British Circus when Sonja, Delhi and Vana Mana will be put through their paces at the Newark Showground.
As they form up for their trademark pyramid stunt – described by organisers as a "sensitive" representation of the natural mating act – the elephants will be on the first leg of what could be an eight- month tour, appearing before audiences, often twice each day.
Campaigners say their presence here alongside lions, a white tiger, camels, horses, llamas and reindeer marks the beginning of a long-feared revival for animal circuses after years of decline and the Government's repeated failures to ban them.
"We are opposed to the use of all animals in circuses, but elephants are a particular concern because they suffer serious physical and behavioural problems in captivity," said Craig Redmond, the campaigns director for the Captive Animals' Protection Society, which, with the Born Free Foundation and Animal Defenders International among other welfare groups, is opposing the tour.
He claimed there were specific concerns over the elephants, all of which are now approaching 40 years of age. "We already know that Delhi has collapsed twice because of problems with her legs and last year had to be rescued by firefighters using a crane," he said.
"These animals will be touring for eight months, confined to pens or cages, transported around the country by lorry. Training is done in secret and all this just to perform for a few minutes in the big top."
Although the early lives of the elephants are undocumented, campaigners and the circus-owners agree that Sonja, a wild-born African elephant, was separated from its mother during a culling operation in white-ruled Rhodesia or apartheid-era South Africa during the mid-1970s then sold into captivity. Hundreds of elephants were slaughtered in southern African national parks, including Kruger, during controversial campaigns to control their population.
It is believed that Sonja has spent most of her life since in circuses in Germany.
Vana Mana and Delhi are former working Indian elephants "rescued" from the Burmese forests in the 1970s when logging activities there declined and the government restricted the use of the animals in the timber industry. They too have spent decades appearing before European audiences.
German activists, who have built up a database to monitor the movements and welfare of the animals, say Vana Mana is believed to suffer trunk paralysis. A dossier passed to The Independent claims Delhi has stiff front legs and an abscess. In 2006, the elephant had to be rescued by German firefighters after being unable to get to its feet. Two years later, rescuers were called again to pull the animal to safety after it went swimming in a lake with its German owner, Lars Holscher, a former zookeeper. Reports said Delhi had arthritis, preventing it scaling the muddy bank.
Jeff Link, communications manager with the Great British Circus, denied there were any health problems with the animals which were yesterday passed fully fit by a government-registered vet, he said. He challenged campaigners to take their allegations to the RSPCA accusing opponents of "clutching at straws".
The Great British Circus has justified its decision to bring the elephants into the UK, citing a 2007 Defra report which concluded there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that travelling circuses were any worse for animal welfare than zoos.
Mr Link said they were merely feeding the public's desire to witness these creatures at first hand. "We were holding back before that. There was no point at all in bringing more animals if there was going to be a ban but now we have the green light. We would like to keep them because we believe they are wonderful ambassadors for the animal kingdom. They are lovely sensitive animals and people will love them."
But pressure is mounting on ministers to act to prevent the return of more animal shows after the signing of a cross-party petition by 180 MPs calling for a ban on wild animal circuses. Before the arrival of Sonja, Delhi and Vana Mana, the number of performing non-domestic animals in the UK was estimated at 47, among them just a single, retired elephant and 11 big cats. Campaigners want the Government to join Austria, Croatia, Belgium, Finland and Poland which have full or partial bans, and to prevent the numbers of animals in the UK rising again, creating a future welfare time-bomb.
Will Travers, the chief executive of the Born Free Foundation, said it was time that ministers "came to their senses". He said: "Born Free, alongside other organisations, was ready and willing to find homes for the last 40 or so wild animals in the event of a legal prohibition on their use in circuses. Sadly, the opportunity to humanely bring to an end the use of wild animals in circuses at its nadir has almost certainly passed.
"Those individuals within the circus industry determined to continue touring with wild animals have, as predicted, taken the Government's lack of action on this issue as a 'green light' to bring in more animals."
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Comments
Just recently, the restrictions on ivory sales have been lifted, & the inevitable result has been a dramatic rise in the number of elephants being slaughtered in the African continent. We now learn of a wilful return to the ritual humiliation of these noble creatures in the circus ring. What on Earth is happening to us all? At a time when we should all be re-addressing our whole perception of the world & the creatures that share their lives here with us, we are instead regressing. It is as if we have already given up in the face of inevitable environmental decline & are embarking upon a final, reckless orgy of destructive & inhuman behaviour. The gawking dullards who sit around circus rings are totally unaware of the desperate & cruel lives eked out by elephants & other pathetic creatures, & cynical, apathetic, self-obsessed & complacent politicians are likewise anaesthetised.
What the tourists don't know is that the elephants are grotesquely tortured over a long period to 'break them' into docile performers.
Compassion seems to have been steadily going out of fashion in Britain for the last several years.
I remember at the height of the '90s neo-psychedelic revival that more than 20% of the population had become vegetarian.
I guess it turned out most of them wre just scared of Mad Cow disease and salmonella, and the rest just jumped on the bandwagon when it began to look trendily alternative.
Now I hear many of the band-wagoneers are into organic meat - I guess their hearts were never really that into being compassionate!
Shame really, the descent into xenophobia that's going on at the moment seem sto be part of the same counterswing to the '90s alternative boom.
Maybe it'll be fashionable to be nice again some tima around the 2020s!
The report is available below.....make up your own mind!!
http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/wel
Surely the RSPCA can intervene under current legislation.
God's creatures.
Sharron Wilks
First of all there is very little we can do for elephants when they are in thailand or africa the people who live there have different attitudes to everything, they do what they have to to survive, even if we think what they do is wrong it is not our place to change or try and change this.
How many people whom have written in to here have forgotten how many animals have been used as a work force through out history in england, america and any other developed countries. Are the other less developed countries not aloud to do what we did to make money and give us the life we now need?
Back to the topic in hand;
Q1) are these highly trained and obviously tame creatures treated badly? (if so prove it)
Q2) if these elephants were to be re-leased could they re adjust to the new way of life?
Answer these two questions and make your own mind up!
(a personal view on being vegetarian humans have the teeth to eat meat our body needs the sustenance that meat, fish and poultry gives us eat it!)
I do not agree that animals should be treated badly or agree with the way that they are used by other countries but it does show you how we as a nation once were!!!
Regarding how elephants are treated in Africa and Asia, there is a lot being done in the nations which use animal labour to improve animal welfare, and there is a will amonst the people to see a change. Most conservation work done in Africa for elephants, is done by Africans. So it is not a case of 'oursiders' coing in and telling them what to do.
And as to being allowed to use animals. I have to ask, what right have human beings, no matter where they come from, to see animals as commodities? I agree with what you say about the exploitation of animals in rich nations in the past. But just because it was done in the past does not justify it being done now. That's like saying that in the past we had slavery so therefore it's okay if some nations choose to have it now in order to make themselves rich.
We humans misuse the animal kingdom disgracefully. Arrogantly we decide that we are superior and therefore anything we choose to do to them is okay.
But it's not okay. And animals performing in a circus is not only wrong, it is immoral.
I don't know what it is in the temper of the times, but many of the gains made by the animal protection movement are being insidiously reversed. Partly it's just the animal-abusing industries fighting back: furriers insisting that their products are 'back in fashion' (as though fur was opposed because it was unfashionable); the meat business trying to legitimize slaughter and drive vegetarians back to eating meat, through the promotion of half-hearted, pathetically limited welfare measures that still see the animals killed a fraction through their natural life span; and now the circus owners climbing on the exploitative bandwagon.
But it's not just economic: speciesism was always endemic in all societies, because of humans' superior power rather than any moral right, and any progress made in asserting the moral status of animals has been insecure and vulnerable. The government is also to blame for supporting animal abusers by labelling animal rights campaigners as 'extremists' and 'terrorists', and criminalizing much peaceful protest. The media have often contributed to the trend with biased reporting that calls attention to illegal and violent animal rights actions, while wilfully ignoring the terror, pain, and death inflicted on the animals.
The present report is a welcome exception and I hope we'll see more such articles in the Independent.
Meantime, animal rightists must protest all the more vigorously, visibly, and frequently, outside circuses and all other abusive establishments, until our momentum outruns the backward tendencies.