New Billboard Says Circus World’s Old-Style Animal Acts Must Go

PETA Targets Museum Where Elephants and Tigers Are Still Forced to Perform Even As U.S. Wild Animal Acts Vanish

For Immediate Release:
November 5, 2018

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

“Animal Circuses: Still Chained to the Past. Make Them History.” That’s the message on a new billboard, paid for by a PETA supporter in cooperation with Alliance for Animals, that just went up on the road between Madison, the Wisconsin Historical society base, and Baraboo, where the Society’s Circus World Museum still hosts animal exhibitors with long histories of animal abuse.

The billboard is located on Highway 33, east of Breezy Hill Road greeting west-bound drivers entering Baraboo from Portage.

“Circus World may commemorate circus history, but it perpetuates circus cruelty every time it brings in an abusive animal exhibitor,” says PETA Foundation Deputy Director of Capitve Animal Law Enforcement Rachel Mathews. “PETA is calling on caring people to stay away from Circus World until it leaves the exploitation of elephants and tigers squarely in the past.”

During training sessions last year, Ryan Easley—Circus World’s recent big-cat exhibitor—was caught violently whipping tigers, one of whom was reportedly struck 31 times. Carson & Barnes Circus, which Circus World has hired for years, has racked up more than 100 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. In one inspection, federal inspectors found that one elephant used at Circus World was so thin that her hip bones and shoulder blades were visible.

PETA’s motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment.” For more information, please visit PETA.org.