California Senate Bill 716 was introduced last week and will soon be reviewed by the Senate Public Safety committee, with a possible hearing later this month.  The full bill text is attached for your reference, along with an article featuring Senator Ricardo Lara’s (D-Bell Gardens) remarks about his sponsorship of the legislation.

If passed, this legislation would ban the use of the elephant guide (also called a bull hook/ankus) in the State of California beginning in 2018. It would apply not only to circuses but zoos and all other elephant exhibitors and facilities in California.  As you well know, this widely accepted and humane elephant management tool is absolutely necessary to safely display elephants in a public setting, whether it be in a circus, at a fair or on a movie set.

Please take a moment to contact the seven members of the Senate Public Safety Committee with a short e-mail, phone call, or letter, and encourage your friends and family to do the same – especially those who live in California or who have been to circus performances or elephant exhibits in the state.  Sample talking points for your correspondence are listed at the end of this alert, but please use your own words and your own experiences as a circus animal supporter to politely express your opposition to this elephant ban. 

Thank you!

Committee Contact Information:

Senate Standing Committee on Public Safety

State Capitol Building

Room 2031

Sacramento, CA  95814

(916) 651-4118

Email for Committee: SCOPS@sen.ca.gov

Committee website (with links to individual members): http://spsf.senate.ca.gov/

 *Please note that individual email addresses for the Senators are not available, but on the Committee website you can click on “Contact Me” for each member to fill out a message, or use the SCOPS@sen.ca.gov email address to send a general email to the whole Committee.

Committee members:

Senator Loni Hancock (Chair)

Senator Joel Anderson (Vice Chair)

Senator Mark Leno

Senator Carol Liu

Senator Mike McGuire

Senator Bill Monning

Senator Jeff Stone

Sample Talking Points

The following are suggestions for your correspondence in California, but please use your own words, and you do not need to include every bullet point.  Please keep all correspondence respectful.

·         Politely tell the Public Safety Committee members that you are OPPOSED to any measure that would prevent circuses and other travelling exhibitors with elephants from visiting California.

·         Circus elephants and other performing animals are well cared for and generally are healthier and live longer than their counterparts in zoos.

·         True animal experts know that a safe and secure environment is the only acceptable and successful method of training any animal, including elephants.  The elephant guide, sometimes called a bull hook or ankus, has been used by elephant handlers for thousands of years.  Elephant handlers in zoos, nature preserves and circuses throughout the world use the guide as an extension of the trainer’s arm along with a voice command.

·         If any animal is being mistreated in any environment, then the right answer is to enforce existing laws and regulations to punish bad actors, as opposed to punishing an entire industry and the public who enjoy circuses.

·         Proponents of performing animal bans mischaracterize or misunderstand the facts about the training and handling of circus animals. Most of the organizations that advocate such bans do so as part of a larger, animal rights agenda which opposes all or most human interaction with animals.

Thank you!