NEWS

Ringling Bros. circus elephants set for final act Sunday

Katharine Lackey
USA TODAY
Elephants parade into the arena during a Ringling Bros. show on April 17, 2016 in Fairfax, Va.

The iconic elephants of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will parade into a Rhode Island arena for their final performance Sunday, ending a classic feature of "The Greatest Show on Earth" that began in the "big top" circus tents 145 years ago.

The giant pachyderms' last act follows decades of protests by animal rights activists claiming the methods used to train and house the elephants are cruel. Ringling bowed to the pressure as state and local rules placed more restrictions on the circus' use of exotic animals and the bullhook trainers use to control the animals.

"It’s the end of a long era and it’s an overdue policy," said Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States.

Dorothy Herbert, a famous Circus Equestrienne from the 1930s and 1940s poses with an elephant at a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1930.

About 10 million people attend Ringling events each year, according to Alana Feld, Ringling's executive vice president and show producer. The last shows featuring the two touring elephant groups will take place in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and Providence, R.I. on Sunday. Ringling will livestream the final performance in Providence on Facebook Live and Ringling.com.

"There’s going to be a lot of emotion around the performances, a lot of people coming to see the elephants for the last time and certainly for our performers and everyone traveling with them it’s a big change," Feld said.

The move means early retirement for the circus' 11 remaining Asian elephants that range in age from 6-year-old April to 48-year-old Asia. Together, the traveling troupes — five elephants in one, six in the other — performed 1,000 shows a year in 80 cities.

When the curtain closes, the animals will take one last trip by truck and train to Ringling's 200-acre Center for Elephant Conservation in central Florida, where they will join 29 of their compatriots in the largest herd of Asian elephants in the Western Hemisphere.

There, the former stage performers will roam, hang out and play with an assortment of toys, balls and even massive truck tires leftover from Feld Entertainment's Monster Jam events. As an additional enticement, the center is building two new pools to allow the water-loving elephants that already use 80 gallons of water a day for drinking and bathing even more splash time. At night, the animals are restrained in chains — which still allow them to lie down and turn around — to make sure they don't disturb each other or steal each other's food, according to Ringling.

But the elephants will also be involved in some more serious work: the search for treatments or a cure for pediatric cancer. Elephants rarely develop cancer. Researchers want to find out why so they are using the center's elephants to study the cancer-fighting gene entangled in their DNA.

Ringling Bros. circus elephants to retire in May

Ringling had planned to phase out its elephants by 2018, but in January it sped up the process. The company finished plans and preparations needed to move the animals, such as ensuring the center's facilities were ready to house and care for the extra elephants, much sooner than anticipated. The cost to care for each elephant, which stand up to 10 feet tall, weigh up to 11,000 pounds and eat up to 300 pounds of food a day, amounts to $65,000 annually.

Elephants from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus parade past the Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on March 16, 2010.

The use of bullhooks — a long stick with a sharp metal hook — in the elephants' training and handling, along with chains and other methods of controlling the animals has drawn the ire of animal rights activists who say such methods are cruel.

Ringling maintains those practices are humane and not only for the safety of the humans who work with the animals but also for the elephants themselves.

"There’s a lot of critics out there, but the bullhook is the most humane and the USDA-approved tool to work with animals," Feld said. "We believe it’s necessary in working with them and interacting with them."

While animal rights groups largely praised Ringling's decision to retire its elephants, some say the move doesn't go far enough and want the circus to eliminate other animals in its acts, including lions and tigers.

"Taking elephants out of the shows is only the first step," said Rachel Mathews, PETA Foundation Capital Animal Law Enforcement counsel. "Ringling must now put an end to all of the abuse on the big top. Elephants don’t want to stand on their heads (and) tigers don’t want to jump through hoops."

Pacelle said audiences, too, want change, and other entertainment companies have responded. Cirque du Soleil and theme parks such as Disney developed new shows for customers, without the use of live animals.

"This decision to end the use of elephants in circus by Ringling is a tipping point in the debate over the use of animals in live entertainment," he said. "The use of wild animal acts is not only inhumane, it’s archaic, and more and more customers realize that."

It's difficult to put a number on the remaining circuses that use elephants, Pacelle said. More and more outfits are halting the acts, and the exit of Ringling as a "political protector" of the use of elephants and the bullhook is likely to spur more local and state governments to crack down on the practice, he said.

"Ringling is the big brand to relent on the use of elephants in traveling acts, and I think it will just be a matter of time before all of it ends," Pacelle said.

The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey elephants enjoy lunch Feb. 18, 2016, at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.

While the elephants will no longer take part in Ringling's performances, the show must go on. The company is launching a new production that Feld said is unlike anything it's done before — taking audiences into space for the first time.

With elephants out, hear what's next for Ringling Bros.

Called "Out of This World," the new circus experience kicks off in California in July and transports audiences on a planet- and galaxy-visiting adventure that includes performance transitions from ice to a dry surface and to the air, Feld said.

"In many ways, we’re really creating a whole new genre of circus," she said.

Ringling Bros. ringmaster David Shipman points to one of the elephants at a performance in Fairfax, Va., on April 17, 2016.