Information GRASS VALLEY – As an elephant named Rosie plodded slowly around a carnival ring with two smiling fairgoers on her back, Jack Banks stood a few paces away Thursday, armed with a large book depicting pachyderms in the wild.
Paige Colongione, 11, listened to his spiel about everything that is wrong about elephant rides at county fairs. Wild animals should not be forced to perform, he said. The elephants are chained and trucked to far-flung places. The training methods are cruel.
But Paige was torn.
"Some people who live in California will never get to go to Africa to see elephants," she said, standing with her friends Madison and Lexie Templeton and their mom, Julie. "So having them here is kind of cool."
The battle lines are drawn this week at the Nevada County Fair, where animal activists have converged to protest the elephant rides featured as part of this year's "Under The Big Top" theme.
More than 100 people, some dressed in elephant costumes, protested the rides Wednesday evening near the fair's main gate, drawing honks of support and shouts of derision from motorists. Outside ticket booths Thursday, activists passed out fliers and tried to convince fairgoers to forgo the rides.
At the center of the controversy is an incendiary undercover video of elephant trainers for Have Trunk Will Travel, which brought Rosie and her elephant companion, Becky, to Grass Valley. The video, which the company claims is heavily edited and misleading, shows trainers repeatedly striking elephants with titanium poles in an effort to get them to lay down and obey other commands.
The dust-up in bucolic Grass Valley reflects a growing debate about wild animals and their interactions with humans.
Once a staple of fairs and carnivals across the country, elephant rides are fading from the landscape. No other venue in Northern California has featured them in years, said Ed Stewart, whose PAWS sanctuary in Calaveras County allows rescued elephants to roam freely. The Santa Ana Zoo and the Orange County fair, among other venues, recently stopped offering elephant rides.
Have Trunk Will Travel spokesman Paul O'Sullivan said the trend is bad for both the public and elephants. O'Sullivan said the company's owners and trainers, Kari and Gary Johnson, are compassionate animal advocates and conservationists who consider it part of their mission to introduce the public to creatures they might not otherwise see.
O'Sullivan said the video, filmed by an undercover member of Animal Defenders International, was edited to present the worst possible picture of elephant training. Most of the time, he said, the company's trainers use positive reinforcement.
"The video is designed to inflame and enrage people," he said. "It's not designed to inform."
Stewart of PAWS called the techniques shown in the video abusive and disturbing. But the larger question, he and others said, is whether wild animals such as Asian elephants should interact with humans at all.
"The elephants here, in captivity, are not very far removed from elephants in the forests of India or the savannah in Africa," said Stewart, a former animal trainer who now travels the world advocating for elephants. Placing them on public display, whether in circuses, carnivals or petting zoos, he said, is inappropriate.
"It's out of date and out of touch," said Stewart. "If someone wants to teach their children about elephants, the worst way to do it is to have them ride one in a fair, or see one in a tutu at a circus."
The Nevada County Fair campaign began with locals who got wind of the elephant rides and notified area animal groups. "Action alerts" followed and national groups jumped in, including Animal Defenders International, whose members filmed and distributed the elephant training video.
Soon, "people started coming out of the woodwork to join us," said JP Novic of the Center for Animal Protection and Education, a rescue group based in Grass Valley.
An online petition gathered more than 100,000 signatures. During three public hearings, the Nevada County Fair board heard emotional testimony from scores of opponents of the rides.
"I've been doing this a long time, and I've never seen an issue rally public opinion like this one did," said Kim Sturla of Animal Place, a Northern California sanctuary for farm animals. "Support has been huge."
The reaction "was certainly larger than we ever could have anticipated," said fair spokesman Jim Simmons. "It's obviously an emotional and deeply felt passion for people who care about animals."
But given the theme of this year's fair, "the board and management decided that elephants would be a nice attraction to add," Simmons said. Officials researched Have Trunk Will Travel's regulatory record, he said, and found it to be pristine.
"The fair has a long legacy of commitment to animals. So bringing in elephants to highlight the theme and speak to the need for conservation seemed right," said Simmons.
The animal advocates begged to differ, gently greeting fairgoers Thursday before handing them literature with the headlines, "Please Don't Ride The Elephants" and copies of the controversial video, titled "No Fun For Elephants."
Hannah Fish of Grass Valley and Jen Kemppinen of Newcastle stood outside the main gate, seemingly unfazed by the fact that most fairgoers were more interested in corn dogs and Ferris wheels than the plight of the elephants. A couple of people called the young activists liars. One accepted their literature, then crumpled it and threw it to the ground.
"We ride horses here!" one woman shouted, waving her hand dismissively. "My kids raise 4-H animals!"
A few people, though, engaged them.
"It's wrong to abuse elephants. But what if letting them give a few rides helps out their cause?" asked Jesse Crawford of Grass Valley. "I definitely see both sides of it."
Inside, as a steady stream of fairgoers climbed the ladder that led to Rosie's and Becky's backs for short rides at $10 a pop, Julie Templeton said the protesters gave her food for thought about the elephants.
"It's a tough one," she said. "I would rather see them in a sanctuary, in a natural setting, or in the wild. But I'm not ready to go out and join the protesters."
Call The Bee's Cynthia Hubert, (916) 321-1082.