Local Travel Company Will No Longer Promote Interactions With Wild Animals
PETA Sends Bear-Shaped Vegan Chocolates to International Cruise & Excursions in Thanks for Compassionate Action
For Immediate Release:
April 15, 2019
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
After communications with PETA, Scottsdale-based travel company International Cruise & Excursions (ICE) has committed to no longer promoting interactions with wild animals. The move comes after PETA contacted the company about a video on the Facebook page of Must Do Travels, an ICE brand with 8.5 million followers, showing a woman holding a baby bear, which ICE quickly removed after learning about the cruelty inherent in forcing wild animals to interact with humans.
“International Cruise & Excursions was quick to recognize that cruel and dangerous interactions with wild animals have no place in the modern tourism experience,” says PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Brittany Peet. “PETA urges travelers to keep all tourist traps that offer photos with wild animals off their itineraries and to support only the compassionate, informed travel agencies that have pledged to do the same.”
In nature, bear cubs stay with their mothers for two years, enjoying their protection and learning crucial life lessons. But cubs used for photo ops are taken from their mothers shortly after birth—which causes lifelong psychological trauma—and they often live in cramped, filthy enclosures with limited (if any) opportunity to express natural types of behavior. These stressful conditions often cause the bears to exhibit abnormal behavior patterns, including suckling on their own body parts, pacing back and forth, and walking in endless circles. Direct human contact with adult bears is inherently dangerous and has resulted in injury and even death.
International Cruise & Excursions joins Expedia, TripAdvisor, and other travel industry leaders in restricting interactions with wild animals. The company will receive a box of bear-shaped vegan chocolates in thanks for its decision.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
