stupid,stupid,stupid.

Leave the lions, tigers and elephants just outside our city limits. I can't use the word of my choice describing these decision makers. It wouldn't be politically correct. However, I am glad the children in school can see these animals on the Internet. Maybe these people can write the CRTC and have all the old movies about real circuses and can get the animal scenes edited out. No sense confusing the kiddies about movies and real life. I am sure they will grow up to be non-sexist, non violent environmentalists. Great job yer doing, ya lefties. Grrrr.

Thnk you SPCA in being so instrumental for making this happen...
imagine a circus and no animals...
what next...
no police dogs...
or how about no seeing eye animals...both activites are unnatural for them...
how about a rodeo with no animals...that will be exciting.

Sounds just like Prince George....We are such a beautiful people up here. So 21st century...Just think of all the jealeous people who don't live here wishing they could be this drab. Sorry I can't go...just can't handle all the excitement.

Prince George is late off the starting blocks. Nova Scotia banned exotic animals in cirucuses province wide in 2000.

http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/648324

Thank (deity of your choice) that Prince George is so politically correct. Now could all the do gooders please put in a word for us (fix the damn roads, morons)
metalman.

a circus without "exotic" animals is just a bunch of clowns and freaks running around. No point in going at all. we have plenty of clowns in city hall and the freaks run around downtown.

one would presume, if you listen to the crap the SPCA and other spout off, that all Circus's abuse their exotic animals..they deduction would be that they are probably abusing the chickens, horses, cows and other assorted critters as well...
maybe even abusing their human performers???
maybe anything to do with animals should be banned????
Maybe they should clean up their own back yard first...

one would presume, if you listen to the crap the SPCA and other spout off, that all Circus's abuse their exotic animals..they deduction would be that they are probably abusing the chickens, horses, cows and other assorted critters as well...
maybe even abusing their human performers???
maybe anything to do with animals should be banned????
Maybe they should clean up their own back yard first...

I'm not going.

Have none of you ever heard of Cirque du Soleil (that's french for Circus of the Sun in case you did not know). They have become the biggest "Circus" in the world without ONE animal. The performers are people who are not clowns and freaks. (Must say Loki I did have a chuckle though with your last sentence).
What I am trying to say is that you do not need animals to put on a circus.

CDS is a theatrical performance.

You can all thank Kathy Travers (queen of the local SPCA) for that.

I fully expect that her next task will be to eliminate rodeos, and she will probably even put an end to all those horses being caged behind the multiplex in jail cells.

(Even though many of those horses belong to influential people in town, people who may even be valued supporters of the SPCA, heck...maybe she even has a horse there herself ??)

I wonder though, what do you do with an elephant or two or three that cost thousands of dollars a month to care for properly, when they can no longer support themselves financially ?

Do the animals THEN suffer ?

Maybe the circus is just a way of raising the necessary capital TO care for them properly ?

If not for the circus, would people donate enough money to such a cause to sustain the animals care ?

The Stanley Park zoo is a good example to look at. When they closed the zoo, the aquarium had nothing but financial shortfalls.

But hey, Kathy knows best, that's why she's from America.

Thereasonableman.

If CDS is a theatrical performance how would you describe a circus with animals?
Just curious...

oh I know, thereasonableman, she is one of many

Are Lipanzzer Stallions next??????

actually Thereasonableman is correct.
It is a real shame that many circuses over the years were found to use abusive techniques to train and control the animals and so caused the animal rights groups to force the banning of animal acts.
It is a shame that children and adults alike are no longer able to see how impressively large an elephant is or how terrifying a real tiger's roar is.
Without this sort of exposure, these exotic animals fade into the unknown, and with that concern for their habitat and species survival also fades.
Zoos and circuses could have positively influenced our attitudes towards conservation. Now they are models of how captive animals are abused.

BCRacer.

If you are referring to my question to reasonableman whatever makes you think I am a she?????

Loki - your last post was excellent and so very true.

BCRacer.
As an add to my last post, what exactly am I "one of many" of?

BC Racer you seem to always attack the SPCA. Are you really that blind that you cannot grasp the importance of what they do? They may not fix potholes but they sure do a lot of good. The staff often risks their lives doing their job.
Hmmmm you are probably even comfortable with a loose dog bouncing around the back of a pick-up truck.

"Zoos and circuses could have positively influenced our attitudes towards conservation. Now they are models of how captive animals are abused."

How can taking an animal out of its natural habitat and putting it into a cage for travelling or into a 2 or 3 acre modern zoo fake habitat positively influenced conservation?

Sort of like taking North American Indians on a sailing ship in the 1800's and showing them off to the crowd in London England. Or putting a North American Indian who was nomadic onto a reserve.

Only those people who lived in the places where the animals lived, and those who could afford to travel there to see them or hunt them would see those animals.

Now we have the attitude that man triumphs over nature and along we come to bring the animals close to people who only have to fork out $5, $10, $20 to have a looki loo all at the expense of the animals.

Having large animal preserves to protect a small portion of their habitat is the only way that one is going to preserve them in any state that might closely resemble their natural environment.

Palopu

Plaopu: the order I think is in process is according to a reliable source:

Circuses
Rodeos
animals on commercials
Zoos
Horse racing
Show jumping
Lipizaner and RCMP muiscal rides
fox hunting
dogs as pets
cats as pets
any animal as a pet
all primate children

Rodeos should be banned immediately. But it has nothing to do with animals.

gus: the idea is to provide a token experience. It is called a representative sample. It is pretty hard to show the true majesty of a lion on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper and there is no way to accurately experience the smell of live animals.

As a matter of fact they did take a few NA aboriginals back to Europe for display and to instill awareness of what they really looked like. It worked because many Europeans became interested in NA and decided to emigrate AND there were some that protested the treatment of those aboriginals.

Sadly it is mostly the hunters that pay the very expensive travel costs to "see" exotic animals. So what you are suggesting is we encourage trigger pullers and leave the ecologists unawares?

Large animal preserves, sort of like Indian reserves? I think that is wrong as well. We should be having SMALL urban reserves and leave the animals to roam freely in the wild instead of reducing their habitat.

"So what you are suggesting is we encourage trigger pullers and leave the ecologists unawares?"

Of course not. That was a bit of a history review. It is the shutter pushers these days as you know. I also brought forward the "Indian" on display because I knew it actually happened.

Trophy hunters do not have to leave this continent. They go hunting in "wildlife parks" set up to guarantee a trophy.
A blog to get you into the feel of the thinking.
http://www.biggamehunt.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3861&start=15&sid=b71f9340ab43841dd0632f12da90913d

aha .... "We should be having SMALL urban reserves and leave the animals to roam freely in the wild instead of reducing their habitat."

So are you going to join the club and stop the development on Tyner Blvd for instance that is encroaching on moose habitat for one? :-)

----------------

"As a matter of fact they did take a few NA aboriginals back to Europe for display and to instill awareness of what they really looked like. It worked because many Europeans became interested in NA and decided to emigrate AND there were some that protested the treatment of those aboriginals"

I do not think you realize what you are saying. It worked? It worked to bring more people over that got rid of their "habitat" or homelands. The few that might have protested had no effect, in hindsight.

I know what a representative sample is. A domestic raised tiger is not a representative sample of any wild tiger. A domestic raised tiger travelling for months in a cage is even further from a representative sample. That is like saying a human kept in cell while travelling, without any human interaction for months on end and no place to go for river walks or whatever humand like to do to recreate themselves as they need is a representative example of humans.

Surely you jest or have not thought this through properly.

I believe that human habitation of the earth has gone beyond critical mass. We need the wild untouched spaces to filter our air and water. By constantly infringing on the wild spaces, we are creating our on demise as well as all the creatures or the earth.

We (humans) do not own the earth. We certainly abuse it.

By bringing a few samples to "the people", we expose them to a small dose of reality. Perhaps a few would become advocates for the creatures and the wild spaces.

I completely agree with your point of the result of making the Europeans aware and then coming over to destroy the aboriginals habitat.

As to restricting the Tyner development, hell yeah. If we look at the bear problem in Squamish, it is because that area has expanded and with the expansion of all the other urban areas, the bears have a dwindling food supply. The bears and cougars no longer are free to range for food as there is no more range.

Maybe we could revitalize the downtown by encouraging redevelopment of the downtown into residential or at least mixed residential and retail space. I have heard the term densification. Maybe that could work?

There are more fundamental issues to over population than simple urban sprawl. China has made an attempt by limiting families to a single child. Too bad it has been a failure, but I think they are on the right track. Human depopulation does not have to be catastrophic, a few generations of limited family group size encouraged by a global culture rather than legislation may be more successful.

"all primate children"

Now that would definitely impact this town.

Many of these animals have been doing this all their lives....so now what?
Put them in a zoo somewhere?
Is that better?
Just because they are in a circus doesn't mean they are miss-treated in anyway.
Sometimes actually seeing these animals live can make people more aware and concerned, which creates a better life and living conditions.
As someone else said...stupid...stupid stupid!
Some things should be monitored, but left alone.

Andy there is so much more to animals in entertainment than you see on the surface. There are professional people even here in PG that can attest to my comment. Let's take the blinders off and get a reality check.
Andy...there is no Santa either and Elvis is really dead.

"Sometimes actually seeing these animals live can make people more aware and concerned, which creates a better life and living conditions."

I think we should bring back the "freak" shows. It will make people more aware of the types of deformities some people have to live with:

Half woman, half man
3 legged person
900 lb man
alligitor woman
Wolf man
smallest person in the world

Maybe since we no longer have them here they did their job of educating us to not have them anymore.

What???
Elvis is dead?
Noooooo!

That's not true, I just saw him working at the Mr. G's.

I paid and went to walk out the door, and he said, "Ah.. thank you, ah.. thank you very much".

Santa is real, but I have my doubts about Michael Jackson. They should put him in a circus freakshow.

And you call yourself "thereasonableman"
You ought to be ashamed of yourself for such an unkind comment.

I guess your name fits you better than mine fits me.

Actually thereasonableman,that can't be true...everyone knows Elvis works at the 7/11 in Smithers.
I saw him singing at the pub last week, disguised as a cowboy!
They booked Micheal Jackson, but he was a no-show.

Michael Jackson got sidetracked when he drove past a daycare center. A locked casket 6 feet under is a good place for him.