‘Life in a Cage Is No Life at All,’ Proclaims Billboard Near Waccatee Zoo

Ahead of Memorial Day, PETA Ad Urges Drivers to Steer Clear of Roadside Zoo Where Animals Slowly Go Insane Inside Barren Cages

For Immediate Release:
April 25, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

PETA has placed a giant billboard in Myrtle Beach depicting a bear held at the notoriously cruel Waccatee Zoo alongside the words “Life in a Cage Is No Life at All. Please Don’t Stop at Roadside Zoos.” The ad is located on Highway 17 Bypass S., approximately a mile southwest of the intersection with Harrelson Boulevard, and has been placed in the lead-up to Memorial Day, which is one of the busiest tourist holidays of the year.

“Waccatee Zoo’s barren cages are torture for the animals locked inside them,” says PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Brittany Peet. “Wild animals belong in their natural habitats, not in cages near the highway, and PETA’s billboard urges drivers to leave Waccatee Zoo and all other roadside zoos in the dust.”

A U.S. Department of Agriculture report released in May 2018 revealed that although Waccatee Zoo had been ordered a year earlier to improve the bear and primate enclosures in order to allow the animals to engage in natural types of behavior, such as swimming, foraging, and climbing, the changes still hadn’t been made by the May inspection. Now, nearly a year later, the changes still haven’t been made. For years, bears—like the one on PETA’s billboard—big cats, and other animals held at Waccatee Zoo have been witnessed pacing and baboons have been seen swaying and rolling their heads—all signs of severe psychological distress.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, which is the human-supremacist view that other species are nothing more than commodities. For more information, please visit PETA.org.