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It took a PETA lawsuit to compel the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) to change course, but after three decades of secretly and illegally issuing hundreds of Endangered Species Act (ESA) permits to circuses, roadside zoos, and other animal exploiters, the FWS will change its ways.

The permits—called "captive-bred wildlife (CBW) permits"—previously allowed animal exhibitors like the notorious Ringling Bros. circus and Have Trunk Will Travel to harm and harass captive-bred endangered animals like Asian elephants without any public scrutiny or comments on their plans. Now, anytime circuses and operators of traveling and roadside displays want to "take" an endangered species (which includes harming, harassing, and wounding them to force them to perform in shows), they will be subjected to public scrutiny and forced to adhere to ESA requirements.

An example of how all this can help animals harkens back to one of PETA's earliest exposés—this one involving Las Vegas "entertainer" Bobby Berosini, whose CBW permit was suspended (and his show closed) after PETA revealed that he had viciously beaten the orangutans used in his tawdry act.

Ringling Bros. circus has a pending CBW permit application that would allow it to take endangered elephants and leopards, so please click here to voice your objections to the FWS right now.

When Ringling brought "The Cruelest Show on Earth" to Tampa Bay, Florida, this week, it was met with a hardy crowd of animal protection advocates—and a group that was a bit, well, shorter. Children showed up to protest Ringling with handmade signs depicting elephants who were beaten and proclaiming, "Kids Know Better."

Out of the mouths of babes—and into the minds of many. Help the awesome kids in your life get involved with PETA Kids.

Has anyone ever told you that ending animal abuse is your middle name? Meet a man for whom fighting cruelty is his first, middle, and last name. PETA Foundation staffer Dan Carron has legally changed his name to CircusesHurtAnimals.com. As he admired his new driver's license, we asked him what he thinks life will be like as a website.   

Whose reaction are you most looking forward to? Perhaps restaurant hosts who call out, "CircusesHurtAnimals.com, party of four"?
What a great reason to eat out more! Yes, I think daily run-ins with people will be the most interesting. I use a debit card a lot, so I will be signing CircusesHurtAnimals.com for people constantly.

What does your mom think about your name change?
My mom always encouraged me to speak out against all forms of cruelty, and when she learned about the abuse involved with circuses, she was happy to have a son named CircusesHurtAnimals.com—although she still calls me Danny.

Do you think that you will get much bigger birthday cakes now?
That was part of the plan!

What is your ultimate goal with changing your name?
I want to use every chance I get to tell people why they should boycott circuses that use animals. After people have visited CircusesHurtAnimals.com and have seen the elephants chained for up to 100 straight hours and have seen the baby elephants who were torn away from their families and beaten bloody with bullhooks, I think they will stop supporting this abuse.

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Ready to join CircusesHurtAnimals.com in slamming the circus? Get started right now with PETA's addictive new iPhone game, Circus Slam!

Courtesy of Lelah Foster

Having a celebrity as the face of an animal rights campaign has helped PETA achieve huge victories. For instance, vocal protests by Sir Paul McCartney and Alicia Silverstone helped convince NASA not to blast squirrel monkeys with harmful doses of radiation. Celebrities such as Olivia Munn and Sarah Silverman have helped publicize Ringling Bros.' cruelty to animals, which recently resulted in the largest U.S. Department of Agriculture fine in circus history. And with the help of Lea Michele, the suffering of horses in New York City's carriage trade is garnering attention.

Michelle Cho, the senior manager of communications, dishes about what it's like behind the scenes of some of PETA's most visible work:

What is one of the most exciting things happening right now with PETA's work with celebrities?
So many professional athletes are enthusiastic about getting involved. Tony Gonzalez, Chad Ochocinco, Chase Utley, Gilbert Arenas, Amar'e Stoudemire, Willis McGahee, Lance Briggs,  Chris Andersen, and many others are allowing us to reach legions of sports fans about animal issues. 

What is one of your favorite celebrity stories?
When I first met Steve-O six years ago, I was interviewing him about elephant abuse that he had witnessed as a student at Ringling's clown college. I recall him saying that he didn't think vegetarianism was possible for him. Then began the phone calls inquiring about feathers, leather, wool, and even animal products in chewing gum! And just two years later, he had an "aha moment" in which he decided that he didn't want to contribute to the unnecessary suffering of animals and went vegan. He is one of the most inspirational people I've ever known, and I'm so proud to call him a dear friend.

Is Hollywood more animal-friendly than it used to be?
Definitely. Thanks to the Internet, we disseminate a lot more information, and it's reaching powerful people. Major ad agencies are pledging never to use great apes, filmmakers are using computer-generated imagery rather than using live animals, and TV shows and movies are including animal rights–related storylines. The support of so many influential people in show business can only pay bigger dividends for animals in the future.

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Join the A-list party! Become a PETA member today.

The record penalty paid by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for violations of federal animal welfare laws has so far made no difference for the lame and suffering elephants the circus forces to travel and perform for months at a time. So PETA has sent an urgent appeal to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) asking that the agency order a comprehensive, independent evaluation of the elephants and prohibit Ringling from taking elephants in distress on the road.

Accompanied by PETA's captive wildlife specialist, two veterinarians with decades of elephant experience attended multiple Ringing shows and expressed serious concerns about the health and well-being of eight elephants. One elephant was observed with an abscessed toenail (foot problems are the number one reason why elephants in the U.S. are euthanized), and another had diarrhea. 

While Siam, a 33-year-old, wild-caught Asian elephant, was lying down, a black hole consistent with an abscess was visible on her front left foot.

All eight displayed severely abnormal behaviors and have extensive scarring from being struck with bullhooks. Fifty-four-year-old elephants Aussan and Sarah have shown a dramatic decline in their physical condition during the past few months alone.

The experts also saw a zebra escape from an enclosure during a show and a tiger whose tail was caught in a cage door.

These elephants cannot wait while the USDA pats itself on the back for penalizing Ringling. Please click here to urge the USDA to take immediate enforcement action to get Aussan, Sarah, and all the other elephants suffering for Ringling off the road for good.

PETA and two supporters in Salt Lake City filed a federal civil rights lawsuit today against two Utah Transit Authority police officers alleging violations of free speech rights. The complaint states that the PETA members were handing out leaflets about Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus to commuter train passengers in a public area when the officers ordered them to leave or face charges for trespassing. While the activists reluctanctly left as ordered, they are now pursuing legal action to protect their free speech rights to educate potential circusgoers about the circus's long history of animal abuse.

Elephants used by Ringling—which recently received the biggest penalty for animal welfare violations in circus history—are chained inside filthy, poorly ventilated boxcars for an average of more than 26 hours straight and are routinely beaten in order to force them to perform confusing and unnatural tricks.

If the circus is coming to your town, exercise your right to free speech! Just be sure to contact city officials ahead of any leafleting or other outreach event to determine whether you need a permit. Contact PETA's Action Team to get help organizing local outreach.

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On the heels of the record $270,000 penalty paid by Feld Entertainment—the parent company of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus—PETA is renewing our call for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to deny the company's application to import eight tigers and a leopard in violation of the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The ESA prohibits importing endangered species except for "scientific purposes" or to benefit the survival of the species. It's beyond a stretch for the circus to claim that it's helping tigers by jamming them into tiny cages and whipping them into submission. Many of the violations that Ringling paid a penalty to settle involved big cats, including a tiger who suffered a laceration after her tail was slammed in a cage door and a lion who died of heat exhaustion in a sweltering boxcar while crossing the Mojave Desert.

The FWS has a duty to protect animals from harm and should not cave in to the demands of an influential corporation that just agreed to pay a huge fine for alleged violations of federal law.

Feld Entertainment, the parent company of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, must now pay the largest settlement of its kind in U.S. history―$270,000―for violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) dating back to 2007.

PETA has been after the USDA all this time to take action against Ringling for abusing the animals in its care. In recent meetings, we presented unequivocal evidence of animal abuse, including beatings, the death of a lion, lame elephants forced to perform despite chronic pain, and a baby elephant who died during a training routine. We had recently filed a new formal request for action against Ringling, and our attorneys had met with the USDA's general counsel and urged her to begin enforcement proceedings.

PETA presented testimonial and photographic evidence that baby elephants at Ringling's training compound are torn away from their mothers and subjected to violent training sessions so that they will learn how to perform tricks, as well as video footage from a PETA investigation showing how elephants used by Ringling are whipped, beaten, and yanked by heavy, sharp steel-tipped bullhooks behind the scenes, prior to performing. 

In addition to receiving the largest civil penalty ever assessed against an exhibitor under the AWA, Ringling must now provide all employees who handle animals with training and hire a staff member dedicated to AWA compliance. We will see how that goes.

This is a great start, but no one should forget that elephants and other animals pay the price every time anyone buys a ticket to the circus. Ask all the parents you know not to take their children to this cruel show, and explain why or show them this blog.

Please click here to thank the USDA for taking action against Ringling for its abuse of animals, and urge officials to go a step further and confiscate the circus' sick and ailing elephants. 

Written by Jennifer O'Connor

If the thought of sitting in a car for hours on end with whining kids, a hard-of-hearing grandma, and a cigar-puffing uncle this Thanksgiving weekend makes you feel queasy, imagine making the trip in a poorly ventilated boxcar with no heat. Upon arriving at your destination, instead of being greeted by welcoming family members, a hearty meal, and a warm bed, you're prodded into a march to an arena basement, where you're chained to a concrete floor until being poked and jabbed into the ring and forced to perform meaningless, repetitious, uncomfortable, and even painful tricks in front of a screaming crowd.  

That is a snapshot of the lives of the elephants who are dragged from one circus show to the next—but a new bill before Congress could give elephants, tigers, and other exotic animals used by circuses a reprieve.

Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia has introduced H.R. 3359, the Traveling Exotic Animal Protection Act, which would, among other measures, prohibit exhibitors from forcing animals to be transported for more than 12 hours without a break and ban forcing animals to perform if they had traveled within the past 15 days, effectively prohibiting circuses from trucking the animals around the country for months at a time.

Internal Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus documents show that elephants used by the circus are chained for up to 100 hours straight (and an average of 26 consecutive hours per trip) while traveling between cities. Not surprisingly, Ringling opposes the bill and has called it an "attack" on "tradition."

Ringling is spending mega-dollars to oppose H.R. 3359, which is why it is so important that you take a moment to click here to contact your representative to ask him or her to support the bill or to thank your legislator if he or she is already a co-sponsor. Let your representative know that animal abuse is not a tradition worth supporting.

Bobby and Moira Roberts, the owners of Britain's Bobby Roberts Super Circus, have been charged in connection with the appalling beating of an elephant named Anne, whom handlers were caught on tape pummeling with a pitchfork and a club. Anne has since been moved to a better situation, but the Robertses will still have to answer for causing Anne to live in misery, chaining her continuously, and allowing her to be beaten.  

It's time for U.S. government officials to be equally active. Elephants used by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus are routinely beaten with bullhooks and traumatized during abusive training sessions.

Click here to ask the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop ignoring, dismissing, and deferring Ringling's violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act.

Written by Jennifer O'Connor