Written by Michelle Kretzer
To drum up business, The Brandywine Zoo in Wilmington, Delaware, is holding a contest to name its two newly acquired North American river otters. So PETA is submitting our top choices for names that we think are otterly appropriate: "Crave" and "Freedom."
wwarby | cc by 2.0
Since the zoo bills itself as an educational facility, our names will help teach visitors that animals belong in nature, not in small enclosures for the rest of their lives. As we pointed out in our letter to zoo officials, "North American river otters are highly mobile and regularly travel up to 26 miles a day. In captivity, their range is measured in feet, not miles. North American river otters are very social and commonly establish large, enduring social groupings. At The Brandywine Zoo, these otters will have only each other for companionship."
We wrote to the zoo to suggest our names because staff members have already narrowed down the options to three pairs of names that people can choose from—for $1 per vote. Considering how the zoo is already cashing in on the new otters, perhaps another appropriate pair of names would be "Meal" and "Ticket."
As an organization that celebrates education, the Smithsonian Institution should have been smarter.
To drum up donations for the Smithsonian's National Zoo, the organization threw a fundraising party complete with wild animals whom partygoers were allowed to touch, hold, and take pictures with. The cheetah, wallaby, penguin, armadillo, and baby foxes were from the Columbus Zoo, which—catch this—rents the animals out for fundraisers and other events. The National Zoo's mission is to demonstrate leadership in animal care and to teach and inspire people to protect wildlife. It certainly fell short.
iStockphoto.com/ruvanboshoff
We have written to the National Zoo and pointed out that wild animals naturally shun contact with humans and become stressed and panicked when they are transported, thrust into the midst of a loud party, and handled by strangers.
We also filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture because the cheetah with whom people were snapping photos is 3 years old—much older than the age restriction of 3 months to which the Animal Welfare Act limits dangerous big cats who are allowed to have contact with the public.
If the Smithsonian wants to live up to its slogan, "Seriously Amazing," it needs to protect animals instead of using them as collection plates.
Written by PETA
After allowing a lion named Casimiro—who had spent nearly three decades in captivity—to suffer an agonizingly slow and painful death, a zoo in Maturín, Venezuela, is now reportedly planning to acquire several new lions to "replace" Casimiro. This would sentence another generation of lions—smart and sensitive animals who long to be free—to the frustration, boredom, and loneliness of life in a barren concrete cell.
Well, not if María Conchita Alonso has anything to say about it. The actor and former Miss Venezuela has fired off a letter on behalf of PETA to Maturín Mayor José Vicente Maicavares, writing the following:
"I have seen the photographs of Casimiro that were reportedly taken prior to his death. They show him wasting away in a tiny cell on a filthy concrete floor while covered with raw wounds and open sores. It devastates me to know that the beautiful country that I grew up in would allow this to happen, and I am even more alarmed by the fact that it could happen again if you don't intervene."
Of course, this isn't the only zoo where animals have suffered and died because of disrespect for their nature, blatant neglect, inadequate living environments, or improper care. Please join María in objecting to the suffering that animals like Casimiro endure in captivity by refusing to set foot inside zoos and urging everyone you know to do the same. You can also write a polite letter to the mayor to encourage him to use his influence to urge the zoo to forgo any future lion displays:
The Honorable José Vicente Maicavares| Mayor of Maturín Palacio Municipal, entre Av. Bolívar y Azcúe Piso 1 Maturín, Venezuela
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
After learning that a 9-year-old girl was bitten by a bear at Chief Saunooke Bear Park (CSBP) in Cherokee, N.C., PETA hand-delivered a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) asking that the zoo's exhibitor's license be revoked immediately. According to a USDA inspection report, the girl was scratched and had tooth marks on her wrist bone after being allowed to get up close to the bear to feed the animal Lucky Charms and cat food. Let me get this straight: The bear's diet includes junk food and little girls. The incident was the second documented bite at CSPB in that week. Last December, a 75-year-old caretaker was attacked by a bear at this crummy roadside zoo.
PETA is working to close the filthy bear pits in Cherokee, N.C., and get the animals shipped to sanctuaries. The shoddy enclosures and the lax approach to human-animal interactions pose a threat to humans, and the bears live a miserable life that can't remotely be termed "humane." CSBP was recently cited for risking serious injury to animals by maintaining unsafe enclosures, feeding bears cat food and sugary cereal, reusing filthy food trays, and other violations.
Please ask the USDA to pull the plug on this dangerous and cruel operation.
Written by Jennifer O'Connor
Animals suffered and died left and right at a shabby Florida roadside zoo, which is aptly called Vanishing Species Wildlife. The outfit routinely took animals on the road to fairs, schools, and summer camps even when they were sick, hungry, dying, and stressed. Good news: Federal authorities have revoked this zoo's license!
Schools and parents, take note: Paying animal exhibitors to hold presentations for your children supports cruelty to animals. Don't patronize any business that exploits animals for profit—please remove field trips to zoos and circuses from your school's curriculum.
Educators who would like free materials designed to teach students to be compassionate toward all living beings can click here.
This film educates its audience about polar bears—and the animals don't seem to mind that they're being spied on. Not so in the case of the video below: Shot by a giggling zoo visitor, it shows how polar bears suffer in captivity (so much so that some animals are given mood-altering drugs) and how naïve zoogoers misinterpret the animals' neurotic behavior.
The typical enclosure for a polar bear at a zoo is a mere one millionth the size of a polar bear's minimum home range in the wild.
And if the International Polar Bear Conservation Centre has its way, more bears will be taken captive. The center's plan is to seize polar bears from the wild in Manitoba and dump some of them at the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg and others at zoos around the world. The export of polar bears from Manitoba was stopped in the 90s after animals were found languishing in all sorts of places—even, as PETA discovered, in a Mexican circus. But now, some are determined to resurrect this cruel practice.
And others are determined to stop it: John Youngman, a lawyer and former president of the Zoological Society of Manitoba, wrote this enlightening commentary. Every sentence underscores how misguided the center's plan is, but I think my favorite point might be the following: "As for educational value, the only substantive thing a polar bear in captivity teaches kids is that it's okay to ruin an animal's life for our viewing pleasure." Or maybe it's this: "There is no 'conservation' value in capturing wild polar bears and putting them in zoos. Nor is there any known program for successfully rehabilitating orphaned or captive-born polar bears back into the wild."
Tell us which point in Youngman's piece you think hits the hardest, and if your local zoo houses polar bears, please ask it to phase them out. As long as there is a demand for keeping these animals captive, the industry will look for ways to abduct them from their homes.
Written by Karin Bennett
Bullhooks are heavy batons with a sharp metal hook and point on the end. If someone routinely smacked you with one, wouldn't you eventually fight back? Video footage taken at the Toledo Zoo shows that a young elephant named Louie did just that: He charged his bullhook-wielding keeper, leaving him hospitalized with serious injuries. In the video, Louie is shown backing away when he sees keeper Don RedFox approaching him with a bullhook. Louie then turns around and charges at RedFox after RedFox jabs him with the implement.
The Toledo Zoo still uses the archaic free-contact elephant-handling system. In free contact, elephants are dominated and punished with force, and that puts keepers at constant risk. The zoo's use of the free-contact system has previously been discussed in Toledo. The zoo failed to act on a July 8, 2005, "Lucas County Commissioners Special Citizens Task Force for the Zoo Final Report" that confirmed that keepers have been injured under the current free-contact system. Now we are asking the zoo's board of directors to allow us to bring in a team of elephant experts who can train zoo staff to eliminate the use of bullhooks and transition to a protected-contact system, which more than half the accredited zoos in the country already use.
For the elephants' well-being and for the safety of zoo employees, please join us in asking the Toledo Zoo to eliminate cruel and outdated circus-style handling.
All the way on the other side of the world, the folks at PETA Asia are tireless in their campaigns for animals. We routinely get e-mails from them at midnight their time (and ours) updating us on their newest campaigns and victories. Recently, PETA Asia gathered a group of sexy supermodels to pose in a new ad protesting the large zoo that's on the sixth and seventh floors of a Bangkok department store!
PETA Asia fights for animals throughout a huge region, from protesting vivisection in a Malaysian laboratory and animal fights in Indonesia to weighing in on China's first-ever animal protection laws.
You can keep up with everything these folks are doing by subscribing to the RSS feed for their recently launched "Hot & Sour Scoop" blog.
PETA and ZooCheck have been campaigning to convince officials at the Edmonton Zoo, deemed Canada's worst zoo for elephants by African elephant biologist Winnie Kiiru, to release its sole pachyderm prisoner, Lucy, to a sanctuary. We've reasoned with zoo officials. We've enlisted support from experts and celebrities. And we've called on caring supporters to write letters pushing for Lucy's retirement.
Unfortunately, it took proposed litigation against the city of Edmonton for zoo officials to make a pathetic attempt to improve Lucy's sad state and announce their "plan" to improve her life by putting her on a diet, giving her some sand to stand on—and possibly providing her with a treadmill.* We responded to this craziness with a full-page ad, which ran yesterday in the Edmonton Journal.
The zoo's policy of locking Lucy inside during the long, bitterly cold winters means that Lucy spends most of her time in a small barn. When she is allowed outside, she's primarily restricted to an enclosure that is less than an acre in size. It's no surprise that Lucy exhibits signs of mental distress, and her medical records reveal that she has been suffering from arthritis as well as chronic foot and respiratory problems.
It's time that Edmonton Zoo officials made the decent decision to help Lucy by retiring her to a sanctuary where she can enjoy warmer temperatures, acres of space to roam, and the company of other elephants. Please help by sending your polite comments to Edmonton's mayor and city councilmembers.
Stay tuned for updates.
*I think if Edmonton zoo officials were serious about enriching Lucy's life and improving her health, they'd sign her up for some Jazzercize classes. I'm obviously joking, but building a jumbo-sized treadmill for the overweight elephant is just as ludicrous. (Am I right—or am I right?)
How could we not plug the new, adorable polar bears at the Saint Louis Zoo? After all, we are all about the zoo of the future, and this zoo exhibit is unlike anything we've ever seen before. Instead of flesh-and-blood bears, the zoo is currently displaying electric proxies, and we couldn't be more thrilled.
A study out of the University of Oxford determined that polar bears fare especially poorly in captive situations. These large, roving predators develop neurotic behaviors because of stress when kept in captivity because they are unable to satisfy their instinct to roam. The report noted that "a polar bear's typical enclosure size, for example, is about one-millionth of its minimum home-range size," and the authors concluded that "the keeping of naturally wide-ranging carnivores should be either fundamentally improved or phased out."
The Saint Louis Zoo has a miserable record of polar bear "care." Four years ago, a polar bear named Churchill ate a toxic meal of cloth and plastic and died during his subsequent stomach surgery. Just one month later, the polar bear Penny died from infection. She had two dead fetuses inside her uterus, though zoo officials didn't know she was pregnant. Hope, the zoo's last surviving polar bear, was euthanized earlier this year after veterinarians discovered she had cancer.
We're hoping that the zoo maintains its merry instillation year-round, making every day a cause for polar bears to celebrate. And if they decide that the still-lives don't quite cut it, we'd love to see the zoo invest in animatronic bears that look and act like the real things.
Written by Logan Scherer
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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