Click here to send a letter to the USDA to get Tonka and Luna off the road.
As you know - I have been following Ringling Bros city to city documenting the elephants - Every time Ringling rolls into and leaves a city I witness them loading Tonka and Luna onto a truck from the train. Ringling is not allowing them to walk with the other elephants. Please help get them off the road. Click on the link above to send a letter to the USDA to get Tonka and Luna off the road. I will keep you updated from the road. Please urge the USDA will take action soon so Tonka and Luna dont have to suffer out here any longer.
Luna and Tonka, two elephants traveling with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, urgently need your help. Apparently considered too dangerous and unpredictable to walk from the train to the arena with the other elephants, Luna and Tonka are usually trucked instead. This denies Luna and Tonka the brief opportunity to stretch their legs and walk after spending up to several days chained in cramped, filthy boxcars.
The misery that Luna and Tonka endure week after week is unacceptable. If Luna and Tonka are so dangerous that they aren't always allowed to walk with the other elephants, they shouldn't be on the road at all.
Please help Tonka and Luna. Write to the USDA and urge the agency to remove Tonka and Luna from travel!
Tonka and Luna have suffered similar abuse at the hands of the circus industry. Twenty-three-year-old Tonka was born at Circus World—a failed circus theme park built by the owner of Ringling, who sold it to the Mattel toy company (hence the name Tonka).
Luna was born in 1984 at a circus trainer's facility. Before she was even 1 year old, both she and Tonka were transferred to Bobby Moore's Performing Elephants, where they stayed until their transfer to Ringling about 18 years ago.
In 2006, PETA's circus monitors saw signs that trouble was brewing for these two elephants, described by former Ringling employees as especially dangerous. Not only did we see handlers repeatedly yelling at Luna and Tonka, we also videotaped a handler leaving a bloody bullhook wound behind Tonka's earflap and a handler embedding a bullhook into her chin.
The circus is no place for animals. In the wild, elephants roam for many miles a day, play in the mud, swim in ponds, and spend time with their loved ones. In circuses, elephants are beaten and gouged with sharp metal bullhooks. They spend their lives in chains, being dragged around the country and forced to perform tricks that are confusing and unnatural to them.
Since Ringling refuses to do right by Tonka and Luna and remove these elephants from travel, we are asking the USDA to step in. Please contact the USDA and politely demand that action be taken to get Tonka and Luna off the road!
Tonka's 24th birthday is August 23—let's give her the best birthday present ever: a reprieve for her and her companion, Luna, from a hellish life with the circus!
Click here to send a letter to the USDA to get Tonka and Luna off the road.
