PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is currently campaigning for the welfare of circus animals. Their campaign is aimed at a USA-based company – Ringling Bros. circus – and they are inviting concerned people from around the world, as well as USA residents, to express their views to the government and the company.

This cruelty issue is not restricted to the USA since many countries still have circuses that use animals. Studies repeatedly show that circus animals suffer unreasonable stress because of their cramped and unnatural living conditions, travel, enforced performances and removal from normal social contact with their own species.

The following information is from PETA’s website: http://www.ringlingbeatsanimals.com/bound-babies.asp

Never-before-seen photos reveal how Ringling Bros. circus trainers cruelly force baby elephants to learn tricks, and it's not through a reward system, as they claim. You might have wondered how Ringling Bros. gets 8,000-pound (3,629 kg.) elephants to perform tricks like sitting up and even standing on their heads. Ringling breaks the spirit of elephants when they're vulnerable babies who should still be with their mothers. Unsuspecting parents planning a family trip to the circus don't know about the violent training sessions with ropes, bullhooks and electric shock prods that elephants endure.

Baby elephants are cruelly bound with ropes and wrestled by several adult men to learn circus ‘tricks’. The baby elephants scream, cry and struggle as they are stretched out, slammed to the ground, gouged with bullhooks and shocked with electric prods.

At Ringling, still-nursing 18- to 24-month-old baby elephants are captured rodeo-style, roped around all four legs, tethered neck-to-neck to an ‘anchor’ elephant and dragged from their mothers. From this point forward in their lives, every movement, every instinct and every natural form of behaviour is subjected to suppression and discipline at the whim of the trainer. Ringling restrains baby elephants with ropes or chains on a concrete floor in a barn for up to 23 hours a day to break their spirits. The babies are never allowed to play outdoors or enjoy anything that is natural or important to them.

PETA is calling on people to stop going to circuses that use animals and on Ringling's sponsors not to support elephant abuse.
PETA is also asking people to write to US Department of Agriculture officials and urge them to revoke Ringling's licence and pursue criminal prosecution of Ringling's trainers today! They have an email letter available on their website.