Brookdale Senior Living Bans Bearadise Ranch Trips After PETA Appeal

Country’s Largest Owner and Operator of Senior Living Communities Receives Bear-Shaped Vegan Chocolates in Thanks

For Immediate Release:
January 11, 2018

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

After learning from PETA that the Myakka City roadside zoo Bearadise Ranch confines bears to cramped transport cages and forces them to perform confusing tricks across the country, Tennessee-based Brookdale Senior Living’s Bradenton, Florida, community will no longer schedule tours to the facility. With more than 1,100 senior living and retirement communities and 100,000 residents, Brookdale is the largest owner and operator of senior living communities in the United States.

“No kind person wants to see sensitive bears bullied into standing on their hind legs or balancing on a ball,” says PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Brittany Peet. “PETA encourages retirement communities, schools, and others to follow Brookdale’s example of compassion and steer clear of Bearadise Ranch or any other roadside zoo that displays wild animals for profit.”

In the wild, bears are active for up to 18 hours a day and they spend their time exploring diverse terrain, climbing, digging, foraging, and building nests. But while on the road for Bearadise Ranch’s traveling shows, they’re kept inside cramped transport cages in which they can barely turn around, let alone escape from their own waste. During performances, they’re forced to ride on scooters, carry a basketball while walking on their hind legs, and pull hoops over their heads, among other unnatural types of behavior.

Brookdale Senior Living will receive a box of delicious bear-shaped vegan chocolates from PETA, whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment.”

For more information, please visit PETA.org.