We urgently need you to contact your member of Congress and ask them to support HR 3359, the Traveling Exotic Animal Protection Act, to restrict the use of wild animals in traveling circuses.
If there is just one thing you have time to do for animals this week please make sure that it is. Pick up the phone, or put pen to paper, or fire off an email today. Keep your message concise and polite but stress that action is urgently needed from Congress now – please see sample letters and details of points to make below.
Click here to send an automated e-mail message to your Congressperson!
If you want to write your own letter instead of using the automated message link above, please scroll down to find sample letters and talking points to use as a guide, but don’t hesitate to speak from your heart and put the letter into your own words which will make a stronger appeal. And remember, only thoughtful, polite messages will have the impact the animals need. Click here to find your member of Congress.
Calls and emails are to Congress members D.C. offices will have the immediate impact the animals need, but please follow up with a letter mailed to their district offices, not in D.C. as all mail going to the Capitol gets irradiated to protect from anthrax, and therefore is not as likely to get their attention.
Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your Representative’s office. (Please do not call your Senator at this time as a companion bill in the Senate has not yet been introduced.)
We want to hear from you! Please share your email and letter with us and let us know when you receive a response from your Congressperson.
You may want to describe the tragic incident where Sarah, a sick, 54-year old Ringling Bros. elephant fell and collapsed recently from a ramp while being loaded into a train in Anaheim, California. Let your legislator know that Sarah is just one of hundreds of animals, stressed and suffering in US circuses.
You may also want to first read, and then tell your member of congress about an in depth feature in the Nov/Dec issue of Mother Jones magazine titled, “The Cruelest Show on Earth”where freelance writer Deborah Nelson sheds light on animal abuses at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus with details she obtained from documents unearthed in an ongoing federal court trial. Details Ringling Bros. painstakingly tried to keep hidden from public view until US District Judge Emmet Sullivan threatened to question and potentially incarcerate the circuses CEOs if “every last record” wasn’t produced. Nelson details court testimony and records, revealing elephants routinely beaten, chained and forced to stand in their own excrement in train cars for hours and even days on end, and a list of baby elephant deaths at Ringling with suspect causes. She also describes how the USDA is ill-equipped and therefore extremely cautious to enforce the provisions of the Animal Welfare Act against a powerful organization like Feld Entertainment, the corporate parent of Ringling Bros. Circus.
Never before has it been more important to contact congress for protections for animals in entertainment. Please do not put this off or you might forget and miss out on an opportunity to make a difference!
Talking points for constituent calls, emails and letters to Congress
- I am aware that a new bill, HR 3359, the Traveling Exotic Animal Protection Act, introduced by Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) aims to protect wild animals in traveling circuses, and as a constituent, I would like you to support, and co-sponsor this legislation.
- Americans are becoming increasingly aware that circus animals in the US suffer from violent training techniques and severe confinement which are unavoidable due to the constraints of constant travel on the road.
- Animals in traveling circuses endure confinement, physical and social deprivation, long, arduous journeys, brutal control methods and physical violence.
- Investigations have documented a pattern of physical violence, where routine training methods involve pain and punishment, and animals are forced to perform silly unnatural tricks out of fear.
- The training tools of the circus trade include bullhooks, a heavy bar with a sharpened point and hook used on elephants, electric prods, whips and other weapons.
- Large animals like lions and tigers spend their lives cramped in small cages, and elephants are forced to live chained by one or more legs for hours and hours on end.
- Traveling circuses pose a serious threat to public safety, and keeping wild animals confined under duress in dangerously close proximity to the public has proven disastrous.
- Circus workers, and members of the public, including children, have been killed and maimed by circus animals. Lions, tigers and elephants have all escaped.
- Countries around the world such as Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Costa Rica, Singapore, Peru, Bolivia and others have taken action to ban wild animals from traveling circuses, and a similar measure is being discussed right now in the United Kingdom.
- Cities across the country have also passed ordinances prohibiting circus animal performances in the interest of protecting animals and the public.
- Please work within Congress to prevent wild animals from suffering in traveling circuses here in the United States.
Sample letters to Congress
Sample letter 1
Dear Congressperson _________,
I am writing as a constituent to ask you to support and co-sponsor the Traveling Exotic Animal Protection Act, H.R. 3359. This addresses an important issue that gravely concerns me about the welfare of wild animals forced to perform in traveling circuses.
Careful research and detailed undercover investigations have shown the welfare of animals is unacceptably compromised under the confinement and cruel training practices that are inherent in traveling circuses. Wild, stressed animals in close quarters with the public has proven to be a public safety hazard, with escaped animals both maiming and even killing members of the public, including children.
Every time we allow a majestic wild animal to be reduced to a cheap circus trick, we are not just turning a blind eye to cruelty, we are advancing the belief that it is acceptable to be inhumane and setting a poor example for our children. Simply put, animal acts in circuses are antiquated and belong in the past. Entertaining contemporary circuses like Cirque du Soleil prove that the show will go on without abused animals.
Many municipalities in the U.S. and countries around the world have taken steps to protect animals and people by putting restrictions on wild animals in circuses. The time is now to act! Please follow the will of your compassionate constituents and be a leader in Congress to work toward protections for circus animals by supporting and co-sponsoring H.R.3359.
Thank you for your public service and I look forward to hearing from you on this important matter.
Sincerely,
Sample letter 2
Dear Congressperson _________,
As your constituent and a citizen concerned with animal welfare, please focus your thoughtful attention to the issue of animals suffering in traveling circuses. I would like to ask you to please support and co-sponsor the Traveling Exotic Animal Protection Act, H.R. 3359.
As the internet and educational television programs expand our understanding of the natural world and the amazing creatures we share it with, Americans are increasingly becoming more sensitive to the complex needs of animals. With that education comes the growing understanding that these animals—elephants, tigers, lions, monkeys and others—are not getting their most basic welfare requirements met under the harsh constraints of life on the road in a traveling circus. The suffering of animals being forced to live in chains, in small cages and endure the boredom and sometimes brutal training inherent in the circus industry has been well documented as a systemic problem. History has proven that wild animals under duress sometimes escape and endanger the public.
Countries around the world such as Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, Singapore, Costa Rica, Peru, Boliva and others have taken action to ban wild animals from traveling circuses, and now in the UK a ban is currently being discussed. I am therefore respectfully asking you to join with other members of Congress to begin the work of addressing this issue here in the United States.
I appreciate all of your hard work in the district and hope that I can count on you to address this and other pressing animal welfare issues in the future. Please support and co-sponsor the Traveling Exotic Animal Protection Act, H.R. 3359.
Sincerely,
Sample letter 3
Dear Congressperson _____________,
I am writing as a constituent concerned about the welfare of wild animals forced to perform in traveling circuses in the US. I would like to ask you to please support and co-sponsor the Traveling Exotic Animal Protection Act, H.R. 3359
Americans are becoming increasingly aware that circus animals suffer from severe confinement, unavoidable because of the constraints of a difficult life of constant travel on the road. Tigers, bears, elephants and other wild animals spend hours on end either chained, in small cages or crowded onto trailers and train cars.
A circus animal’s life of ongoing deprivation is punctuated by moments of physical violence. Investigations have documented a pattern of abusive training methods where pain, punishment and fear are employed to force these wild animals to do unnatural and silly tricks. The tools of the trade include bullhooks, whips, and electric prods which are used to hit, “hook”, and shock animals.
Countries around the world, and cities across the country have recognized importance of banning non-domesticated animals in traveling circuses. I am respectfully calling on you to take a stand, with your compassionate constituents, against this abuse and work toward protecting circus animals in the US by supporting and co-sponsoring H.R. 3359.
Sincerely,
Animal Defenders International thanks you for your support and we look forward to Breaking the Chain of circus suffering with your help!
Join our grassroots Break the Chain campaign to end circus suffering at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Break-The-Chain/162175353801229
For more information, contact our Los Angeles office at 323-935-2234 or by email at usa@ad-international.org
A not-so-gentle reminder to Please contact your congressman and ask him/her to support this Traveling Exotic Animal Protectin Act!
Please stop using animals to entertain humans!!
There’s a three-fold reason for banning the transport of wild animals.
The first of these is that many species used in traveling circuses are endangered species. That such exotic animals are in such high demand threatens the wild populations by poaching and removal of the surviving young offspring.
The second is that circuses have a long and well documented history of cruelity to animals made to perform. Some of these animals, systematically abused and food withheld, might in turn lash out at their handlers or other people out of self defense.
The third and, arguably most important reason, is the risk of diseases jumping species from these exotic and wild species over to domesticated animals and people. Such threats to human health and to the domestic food supply shouldn’t be tolerable, even by those elected officials or government departments that otherwise have no interest in environmental or animal cruelty issues.
Imagine what people will think if you fail to act and someone dies because of a preventable accident or larger catastrophe.
Thank you to Defenders of Animals.
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