Victory! Abusive Elephant Shows Pulled from Colorado Ren Fest After PETA Push

For Immediate Release:
June 5, 2025

Contact:
Nicole Perreira 202-483-7382

In a victory for elephants, the Colorado Renaissance Festival, which kicks off next weekend, won’t feature circus-style elephant shows. Following a flurry of calls and emails from members of PETA and Compassion Works International, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has denied Texas-based exotic animal exhibitor Trunks and Humps, the festival’s longtime elephant provider, a permit to display elephants within Colorado. PETA notes that the three elephants used by Trunks and Humps were all captured from Africa over 40 years ago and have been forced to perform in circuses and traveling shows since they were infants.

Colorado’s Traveling Animal Protection Act, which went into effect in 2021, prohibits using elephants and other exotic animals in traveling circus-style shows. As PETA pointed out, Trunks and Humps uses bullhooks, weapons that resemble a fireplace poker with a sharp hook on one end, to threaten elephants with violence into standing on their hind legs and performing other circus-style tricks—but it has been skirting Colorado law by falsely claiming an exemption for “educational” shows. By denying this year’s permit, Colorado Parks and Wildlife is now enforcing the law, as required.

“Renaissance festivals may celebrate the past, but beating and threatening elephants with bullhooks should be relegated to the history books,” says PETA Foundation Senior Director of Captive Wildlife Debbie Metzler. “PETA is celebrating an end to elephant exploitation at this fair in Colorado, a state that rightly banned these abusive spectacles years ago.”

In nature, elephants live in matriarchal herds, protect one another, and share mothering responsibilities for the herds’ babies. Those used for traveling shows spend much of their lives in shackles. They’re chained in trailers, hauled from one event to the next, and sometimes forced to stand on concrete for long periods. They routinely suffer from painful and debilitating joint and foot problems and may sway back and forth endlessly—a symptom of psychological distress.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.