‘Caution: Cruelty Ahead,’ Proclaim Gas Station Ads Near Bear Pit

Just Ahead of Tourist Season, PETA Posts Ads Urging Drivers to Steer Clear of Three Bears General Store

For Immediate Release:
June 4, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

PETA has just placed ads at an Exxon gas station near Three Bears General Store showing an image of one of the bears held at the notoriously cruel roadside zoo alongside the words “Caution: Cruelty Ahead. Don’t Stop at Tourist Traps That Exploit Animals.”

“Sensitive bears are languishing in a barren pit at Three Bears General Store, with nothing to do but stare at the wall and beg for scraps from visitors,” says PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Brittany Peet. “Bears belong in their natural habitats, not in dumps off the highway, and PETA urges everyone to leave this and every other roadside zoo out of their vacation plans.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—points out that bears held at Three Bears General Store are confined to a barren concrete pit and denied the opportunity to engage in natural behaviors, such as roaming, foraging, and digging. The facility’s long history of animal welfare violations includes allowing moldy excrement to accumulate in the enclosure where the bears are kept and failing to provide them with adequate veterinary care and clean drinking water.

In the past six years alone, PETA has rescued 72 bears from lives of deprivation in roadside zoos, in traveling shows, and from private owners across the country. The group has long called on Three Bears General Store to send the bears languishing there to a reputable sanctuary.

PETA opposes speciesism, which is the human-supremacist view that other species are nothing more than commodities. For more information, please visit PETA.org.

The ads are located at the Dynamite Quick Mart gas station at 2093 Chapman Hwy.