Los Angeles -
After decades of protests by animal rights activists, one of the United States' largest circus companies, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey, announced on Thursday it will retire its elephant acts by 2018.
Thirteen endangered Asian elephants currently featured in circus acts will be moved to the company's elephant conservation centre in the US state of Florida, Ringling Brothers' parent company Feld Entertainment said in a press release that cited “changing consumer preferences” as well as a commitment to elephant conservation.
The move, which Feld chief executive Kenneth Feld called a “significant change,” is a victory for animal rights activists who for decades have called attention to the plight of circus elephants.
“If Ringling is really telling the truth about ending this horror, it will be a day to pop the champagne corks and rejoice,” People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) lawyer Delcianna Winders said in a press release.
PETA urged the circus to end elephant acts immediately, rather than wait until 2018.
Videos and photos circulated for years by PETA and other rights groups show Ringling Brothers' circus wranglers using electric shocks to train baby elephants and beating adults with whips and bull hooks, metal rods with pointed hooks on the end.
Three young elephants died in the Ringling Brothers circus in recent years, PETA said.
Increased public awareness of animal show training practices has contributed to a change in public sentiment in the US.
The cities of Los Angeles and Oakland, also in California, in 2014 passed laws banning the use of bull hooks on elephants, forcing circuses to change their practices or cancel their shows there.
Wayne Pacelle, chief executive of the Humane Society of America, said new laws showed “the public won't tolerate the abuse of elephants,” and “the trajectory was clear that this practice had no future in the 21st century.”
Sapa-dpa