Your Guide to the Reality of Animal Circus



"The academic panel concluded that there appears to be little evidence to demonstrate that the welfare of animals kept in travelling circuses is any better or worse than that of animals kept in other captive environments" - Executive Summary of the DEFRA Circus Working Group 2007

Join us on Facebook The WELFARE of Circus animals.

Friday 31 July 2015

Open Letter: Confidence Industry Or Conservation?








Background:  

Ron Thomson is an ex-game warden and retired national parks board director. He has 46 years experience in southern African wildlife management affairs including 28 years of full-time service in various national park departments and 3 years working as a professional hunter. He now writes books "to create a better informed public" - better informed, that is, about the realities of wildlife management. One of his books has been prescribed reading for the Higher Diploma in Nature Conservation for the last 15 years - an academic course offered to serving wildlife field officers by the Tshwane University of Technology. For more than 20 years he was a Member of the British Institute of Biology and a Chartered Biologist for the European Union.  He has vast experience in both the theoretical AND the practical application of big game management - especially elephant management.  Two of his past posts were: (1) The Provincial Game Warden i/c. of what is now Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park - one of Africa's biggest and most prestigious game reserves; and (2) The Director of the Bophuthatswana National Parks Board (in the 1980s).

Saturday 4 July 2015

Animal Defenders International & The Wild Animal Sanctuary





In February 2015, Rouster highlighted the further antics of the animal-rights business Animal Defenders International (ADI) fronted by Jan Creamer and her partner Tim Phillips. In a blog entitled Lions Are for Life, Not Just the Fundraising, we revealed that ADI had employed the services of the animal-rights friendly Daily Mirror to promote its latest £200,000 fundraising campaign. This new campaign was to relocate lions (and other animals) that had been seized with the collusion of the Peruvian government from ostensibly circuses for relocation to The Wild Animal Sanctuary in the United States.

The blog also highlighted Animal Defenders International's deteriorating relationship with the Longleat Safari Park in regards to its assistance in the rehoming of the former circus elephant Anne.

In a not unfamiliar scenario, it now appears that - as with Longleat Safari Park - the relationship between The Wild Animal Sanctuary (TWAS) and ADI has also broken down, acrimoniously. Reproduced below is a statement from the founder of TWAS, Pat Craig, giving his side of this story regarding the collapse in the relationship of his rescue centre with Animal Defenders International.