100 PETA Radio Ads Seek Charges in Neglected-Bear Case

Group Saturates the Airways, Asking Gov. Wolf to Hold Sportsmen’s Club Accountable for Dillan the Bear’s Years of Suffering

For Immediate Release:
September 29, 2020

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

The following message from PETA will run 100 times on Harrisburg radio stations over the next month:

A bear named Dillan, who had painful and rotting teeth, suffered for years in a small cage at the Union County Sportsmen’s Club in Millmont. Dillan was finally rescued and is now thriving at an accredited sanctuary. Dillan’s abusers knew that he was suffering, but for years they refused to take any action—and yet they have not been charged. Governor Wolf: It’s time to act. To help Dillan, go to PETA.org/Dillan.

The radio ad blitz is the latest action in PETA’s campaign to see that justice is served and cruelty charges are pursued in Dillan’s case, which has also included a video and an appeal to Wolf to pursue charges on the six-month anniversary of Dillan’s rescue in July. Alec Baldwin has written to the governor, and PETA billboards calling on Wolf to take action on Dillan’s behalf went up in early September.

“The Union County Sportsmen’s Club allowed this bear to suffer needlessly for years,” says PETA Foundation Deputy General Counsel for Captive Animal Law Enforcement Brittany Peet. “PETA wants Governor Wolf—and the district attorney, for that matter—to see and listen to our message: Unless Pennsylvania is no longer enforcing state law, Dillan’s abusers must be held accountable.”

Since July 2017, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had repeatedly cited the Sportsmen’s Club for Dillan’s dental issues, obesity, and continuous abnormal rocking (a recognized way of trying to cope with mental anguish)—but the facility took no meaningful action. When Dillan arrived at The Wild Animal Sanctuary in Colorado, the facility’s executive director stated that his dental disease was the most severe and advanced that he had ever seen and that Dillan was, by far, the most obese bear of the more than 300 the organization has rescued.

PETA’s radio ads are running on HOT 106.7 and NASH 93.5 and will continue throughout the next month.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.