Whip cracked over care of wild animals

By ANNE BESTON

Animal rights groups have condemned proposed new rules on caring for circus animals: they want an outright ban on the use of exotic animals.

Save Animals from Exploitation (Safe), the SPCA and the Animal Rights Legal Advocacy Network (Arlan) said the code was watered-down, badly written and would not improve the lot of circus animals.

"This is just tinkering at the edges," said Safe spokesman Gary Reese.

"They haven't improved the situation at all. These are animals that are trained through punishment and deprivation. Exotic animals have no place in a circus."

The new code has been issued by the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (Nawac) and is open for public submissions until next month.

It covers minimum standards for food, housing, training and socialisation for exotic animals such as monkeys, lions and elephants, and domestic animals such as horses and dogs.

The code specifies animals in a circus must have a "behaviour enrichment programme". Lions must "be allowed direct interaction with other pride members" but if elephants can't see or touch other elephants, then other "companion animals" such as horses will do.

But Tony Radcliffe, the keeper of the only circus elephant in New Zealand, told the Holmes show this week that the elephant interacted better with humans than other animals.

His employer, Whirling Brothers Travelling Circus, has had Jumbo since 1978 and he had looked after her for 25 years. He said she was happy playing with donkeys.

Mr Radcliffe said there were no elephants around to partner with Jumbo and to get another one from overseas would cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars

The code says that monkeys and apes must not be kept in isolation except as a last resort due to aggression or death and the circus owner must "make all reasonable endeavours" to get another primate if one dies.

Sick animals should not be in training and animals should not be transported for longer than 24 hours unless being transported internationally.

Animals must have an area where they can retire from public view and have access to shade, water, appropriate food and clean, dry bedding.

Nawac was set up under the 1999 Animal Welfare Act and is made up of farmers, veterinarians, animal welfare representatives and scientists. Its committee issues animal welfare codes on things like religious slaughter or broiler chicken farming.

Its codes must be approved by Agriculture Minister Jim Sutton and are not legally enforceable, although breaches can be used in animal welfare court cases.

Arlan spokeswoman Deidre Bourke said her group had little hope that the "best practice" recommendations in the code would be policed or enforced.

SPCA national president Peter Blomkamp said his organisation's Nawac representative had "done his bit" to try to get exotic animals in circuses banned outright.

While that had failed, the SPCA would continue to lobby individual councils to ban circuses in their area. He said the Nelson City Council was one council that had done that.