Beyond The Big Top

Circus takes stewardship seriously

Janice Aria won't lie.

She is saddened by the idea that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey is retiring all its elephants over the next three years. She'll miss the wonder she sees in the eyes of audiences, and she worries about how the 13 performers will handle losing their routines, their human companions and their work.

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"They take it seriously that they have a job to do," Aria, who is director of animal stewardship for the 145-year-old company, says of the elephants. "It's not like bringing home tractors and the people who drove them. It's much more complex than that."

Over the more than four decades since Aria ran off and joined the circus -- after she completed a bachelor's degree in special education at New York University -- she has watched as animal rights activists have singled out elephants in their lobbying efforts. Critics of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey have pointed to the deaths of two young elephants, one in 1998 and one in 1999; to the use of "bullhooks," which trainers call "guides" and use to give the animals commands; and to the separation of mother elephants and their calves.

Aria says she's not sure why the climate surrounding the circus has changed, but she is sure that the elephants she knows and cares for have always been the elite of the big top. To make her point, she talks about Mysore, an elephant she has known for 43 years. Mysore -- named after a town in India -- arrived in America when she was somewhere between 2 and 5 years old. Like any elephant in the wild, Aria says, she had competed to survive in an ever-shrinking habitat where villagers shoot at elephants to run them out of their fields and the elephants, who pull vegetation up by the roots, constantly have to move on in search of food.

"The minute she joined the circus, she became a goddess," Aria says. "She had a name. She had a place in the barn. She had a routine that was hers. They can say what they will against captivity, but I am thrilled she lived this life."

Mysore is now at least 69 years old. Her hay and oats are ground up for her every day and supplemented with honey so she can eat, because she has lost the last of the six sets of teeth that elephants have over the course of their lifetimes.

"In the wild, she would starve," Aria says simply. "But we make a birth-to-grave commitment."

Mysore, like two dozen other elephants owned by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, lives at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Center for Elephant Conservation in Florida, where Aria is also based. That's where the traveling elephants will also find homes upon their retirement.

"We spend a lot of time discussing how to make this transition productive for these elephants," Aria says. "It falls to us to replace the excitement and the exhilaration of the traveling show for them.

"Most of these guys were born at the center, and we'll keep them in the groups they've been on the units (touring) with, but perhaps also reintroduce them to other elephants they knew when they were younger," she says. "We have some young females that are perfect for the breeding program. We've had 26 successful births, and that makes a major contribution to the survival of the Asian elephant species.

"We'll have to come up with an exercise regime and possibly a routine they do just to keep them thinking."

And, Aria adds, more scientific advances will come from the elephants, which have already had an impact on pediatric cancer and herpes research and efforts in Sri Lanka to help free-range Asian elephants survive.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, Aria believes, will also survive without its biggest attraction.

"The circus, to my way of thinking, defines reinvention," she says. "That's why we've been alive for 145 years. It's going to be different, and some of us that know what we're missing will miss it. But I'm excited to see the changes that will be made to compensate. We're very committed to not letting the public down.

"Still, it's a bittersweet thing."

NAN What's Up on 05/29/2015

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