Victory! Jimmy Kimmel Nixes Wild-Animal Trainer From Line-Up
Animal Exploiter Dave Salmoni Dropped From Jimmy Kimmel Live!
For Immediate Release:
March 12, 2020
Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382
After receiving multiple letters from PETA urging Jimmy Kimmel Live! to end its cruel wild-animal segments, the show scrapped reported plans for exhibitor Dave Salmoni to appear on Thursday’s episode, which will be guest-hosted by Pete Buttigieg.
“Jimmy Kimmel did the right thing in closing the curtain on a notorious peddler of animal suffering,” says PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange. “Sensitive wild animals are not TV props, and PETA hopes Kimmel will adopt an official wild-animal ban in his studio.”
In previous Jimmy Kimmel Live! appearances, Salmoni can be seen struggling to handle a screaming baby mountain lion and a desperately flailing tiger cub, animals who were likely supplied by shady third parties. He has apparently worked with Grant Kemmerer of Wild World of Animals, where a trainer was charged with cruelty to animals for allegedly rubbing cayenne pepper in an animal’s nose last year. Salmoni has also apparently used animals supplied by Wild Wonders, Inc., which has been cited a dozen times for violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, including for caging a highly social monkey alone after his or her cagemate was euthanized. Both facilities indicate on their websites that they have histories of working with Jimmy Kimmel Live!
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—notes that behind the scenes, wild animals used for television appearances are often kept in close confinement and deprived of opportunities for exercise, enrichment, and companionship. Kimmel’s decision comes after his contemporaries Jimmy Fallon and Lilly Singh hosted Robert and Bindi Irwin without wild animals after PETA contacted them.
PETA’s letters to Kimmel are available upon request. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
