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Today, it really is Their Turn! We have three victories to celebrate – each better the next.

First up – Eight female pigs are jumping for joy – literally – because their recent journey from gestation cage to slaughterhouse was pleasantly interrupted by people who liberated them. The brains behind the rescue? A student taking a “swine production” class who fell in love with them. The money? None other than Sam Simon, the Simpsons co-creator who is donating his fortune to animal rights causes.

Last, but not least, lawmakers in Oakland, California, have voted to ban the use of bull hooks, the weapons used by circuses to beat their elephants into submission (see video below). Los Angeles is the only other U.S. city with a bull hook ban. Without these weapons, the monsters at Ringling Bros. will be unable to bring their battered elephants into the city limits. The ban doesn’t go into effect until 2017, but it’s a major victory, and it sets a precedent for other municipalities. Let’s hope that Ringling employees don’t take out their anger on the elephants.

Hit the pause button to celebrate, share and be re-energized by the victories.

Price is Right host and animal rights activist Bob Barker sent a high profile letter to the Oregon Zoo demanding that they send Packy to a sanctuary. Packy is an elderly elephant with tuberculosis who has spent his entire life at the zoo.  “After 52 years of service, Packy deserves to be sent to a place where he can enjoy his final years in peace and serenity,” said Bob Barker. During Packy’s recent birthday “celebration,” the animal rights group Free Oregon Zoo Elephants, which campaigned to get Packy elected to the City Council via write-in ballots, staged a protest in front of the zoo.

Elephants want freedom, not cake. Photo: Michael Durham

If social media is any indication, the world is waking up to the plight of captive elephants — intelligent and socially sophisticated animals who are deprived of virtually everything that comes naturally to them in zoos and in circuses, where they are also beaten into submission with bull hooks, confined for up to 100 hours at a time in box cars and forced to perform tricks in exchange for nourishment. Please support Free Oregon Zoo Elephants in their effort to send Packy to a sanctuary.

Three elephants temporarily escaped from a circus in St. Louis, damaging cars in the parking lot.

Circus elephants escape

While the eye-witnesses who spoke to reporters used the word “escape” to describe the incident, none conveyed an understanding that these elephants are prisoners in the first place, kidnapped from their mothers, chained for most of their lives and deprived of the ability to do anything that comes naturally to them. While the circus spokespeople say that these elephants “are now resting comfortably in their compound,” we know that their “trainers” will punish them by beating them with bullhooks, the weapons used to scare elephants into submission. The use of bullhooks was recently outlawed in Los Angeles. In the absence of bullhooks, elephants would trample their trainers. Ringling Brothers can therefore no longer travel to Los Angeles. On March 21st, One Green Planet published an article on 5 ways you can help end the use of animals in circuses.

Los Angeles became the first city in the United States to ban bullhooks, tools used by elephant trainers in traveling circuses to “keep elephants under control.” According to the L.A. Times, “voting unanimously, the City Council asked the city attorney’s office to prepare an ordinance outlawing the use of the bullhook. Baseball bats, ax handles, pitchforks and other implements used on the pachyderms would also be banned.” Some activists are angry that the Council” agreed to give circuses three years to either change how they handle elephants or remove them from shows altogether.” Because elephants cannot be controlled without bullhooks, a ban on their use is really a ban on the use of elephants. According to One Green Planet, circuses that use elephants have already been banned in Bolivia, Peru, Slovenia, Cyprus, Greece, Paraguay, Columbia, the Netherlands. A ban in the U.K. goes into effect in 2015.

Circus Elephant Trainer with bullhook

Bullhooks are weapons used by “trainers” to scare captive elephants into submission. Their use is one of many reasons why elephants and other wild animals should not be used in circuses. If you support a ban on circus animals, then please see this article published by One Green Planet on ways you can help.