Performing Animal Welfare Society
Pat Derby, Founder and President

“Circuses which include captive wild animals are accidents waiting to
happen. From a public safety standpoint alone, we at PAWS encourage you
and your city to ban all circuses using performing wild animals.

Life for the animals used in circuses and other traveling shows is, at
best, grim and takes its toll on even the most gentle. Elephants, lions,
and other circus animals are forced to perform unnatural behaviors through
use of inhumane and often brutal methods – all in the name of family
entertainment. Circus animals get no respite from performances and
rehearsal where they are frequently beaten, prodded and forced to perform
these highly unnatural acts through punishment and water/food deprivation.
Circus animals are forbidden simple freedom of movement, they are
punished for exhibiting natural behaviors, denied unfettered contact with
their own species, and disallowed access to their natural habitats.

When these animals are not performing or training, they are chained or
confined in small cages – many of them scarcely large enough to turn
around in. Circus animals travel 50 weeks a year, living in tiny cages
where they either freeze in the winter or swelter in the summer. Their
traveling compartments are not climate controlled and ventilation is poor.
Elephants traveling in rail cars are always chained by the feet and
sometimes even bound at the head for several days at a time. Fifty weeks
of life under these conditions creates angry, frustrated and potentially
dangerous wild animals.”