‘Your Ticket, Your Fault,’ Proclaims Mobile Ad Near Oswald’s Bear Ranch

Mobile Billboard Will Condemn Newberry Roadside Zoo’s Cruel Bear Cub Photo Ops

For Immediate Release:
August 28, 2018

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Starting today, a PETA mobile billboard proclaiming, “Your Ticket, Your Fault. Cubs Are Suffering for Photo Ops at Oswald’s Bear Ranch,” will circle the area around the notorious Newberry-based roadside zoo for approximately nine hours a day through September 3. The eye-catching billboard aims to persuade viewers never to support Oswald’s cruel and exploitative use of bear cubs in photo ops.

The billboard comes less than a year after the release of damning video footage showing three bear cub sisters who were used for photo ops at the facility pacing and crying out and one repeatedly chewing on the caging, all signs of psychological distress. Two of the cubs also had visibly thinning hair on their hindquarters, which veterinarians say is likely a result of being confined exclusively to a wet concrete enclosure with no soft bedding.

“This shameless facility has made a business out of encouraging people to use terrified baby bears as social media fodder,” says PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Brittany Peet. “PETA is calling on Oswald’s Bear Ranch to pull the plug on its indefensible bear cub photo ops and urging the public not to buy a ticket to this or any other animal-exploiting shtick.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—notes that Oswald’s Bear Ranch was cited in 2010 for using physical abuse to handle an animal after a handler admitted to striking a bear cub twice during a photo op.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.