Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus have announced that by 2018 they will no longer feature elephants in their shows. This comes after many lawsuits, fines, and cities that have banned circuses featuring wild animals, Jersey City being the latest one.
Since a ban on a whole industry can be difficult, lengthy, and expensive to get pushed through, and can be overturned in the future, some cities like Los Angeles and Austin have done something more expedient: they’ve banned the use of bullhooks in circuses. Bullhooks are used to strike animals, particularly elephants, in sensitive parts of their bodies in order to train them or force them to perform tricks that they may find frightening or painful.
And it’s easy to establish that they are cruel, and therefore easy to get them banned. However, circuses cannot operate without them, so banning the use of bullhooks in a city effectively bans circuses.
The public is often unaware of the cruelty involved in circuses, because they don’t see the cramped cages the animals spend most hours of the day in, or the uncomfortable transport conditions, and they don’t see most of the beatings and whippings that take place since they are done during training and the animals are usually already terrified into submission by the time they are in the ring.
Hopefully more cities will join in banning circuses altogether, and pave the way for a national ban in the U.S. A number of countries have banned them, including Bolivia, Peru, Greece, Cyprus, Paraguay, Columbia, the Netherlands, and Slovenia.
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/02/ringling-brothers-elephants-circus-final-show
http://www.nj.com/jjournal-news/index.ssf/2016/08/jersey_city_moves_to_ban_the_u.html