13-Year-Old Animal Activist to Bindi Irwin: Please Drop the SeaWorld Gig

For Immediate Release:
March 11, 2014

Contact:
Shakira Croce 202-483-7382

Thirteen-year-old activist Rose McCoy has just one request of the late Steve Irwin’s daughter, Bindi: Listen to your grandfather and end your relationship with SeaWorld.

Rose, who made headlines in January for protesting a SeaWorld float in the Rose Parade, has taken to the The Dodo to voice her concern regarding Bindi’s decision to work as a SeaWorld spokesperson. In her post, she reminds Bindi of SeaWorld’s history of cruelty to animals and condemns the park’s practice of keeping orcas in cramped, desolate holding cells. She also appeals to Bindi, as someone who lost her father at a young age, to understand that orcas undergo the same grief and sorrow when SeaWorld tears them away from their parents.

“It makes me sad that instead of working to free orcas―to have them live in the great oceans again―Bindi Irwin is using her name to help keep them in small, barren tanks,” Rose writes. “We don’t want to see orcas and dolphins turned into circus clowns. Animals are so much better than that. We should be, too.”