Russia to outlaw use of animals for circus shows

The State Duma (the Russian Parliament) will consider a bill banning the use of animals in circuses. This issue must be solved consistently so that requirements for keeping animals at circuses would be raising constantly, first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Ecology Vladimir Burmatov believes.

In February of this year, the leader of the New People Party Alexei Nechayev and the deputy speaker of the State Duma Vladislav Davankov introduced a bill banning the use of animals in circuses. According to the authors of the bill, circuses do not always comply with their obligations regarding the proper maintenance and care of animals.

"Animals kept in circuses must be transferred to rehabilitation centers for wild and exotic animals, as well as to shelters for wild and exotic animals," the MPs believe.

Yet, the adoption of this initiative could lead to big problems because rehabilitation centers are "packed" as they already keep animals from contact zoos after the latter were banned in the Russian Federation. They also help rehabilitate animals that suffered from poachers, confiscated animals, etc.

"They have a huge influx of animals already. What kind of rehabilitation centers will accept elephants and tigers?" Vladimir Burmatov wonders.

"We can see that the number of animals used for circus performances has greatly decreased. They mostly use either farm animals that interact with people in one way or another and are easy to train, for example, horses, or domestic animals — trained dogs and cats, which also constantly interact with people. They began to use wild animals less, the percentage of numbers using animals in circus programs has decreased," Burmatov noted.