To the editor:

With all due respect to Mayor Dunfield, I fail to see the educational value in watching a wild animal dressed up in a human outfit performing acts that are totally unnatural to it in the wild, unless, of course, the lesson is that the human species is easily entertained. Rather, I think Alice Walker said it best when she said, “The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites, or women created for men.”

When you add to this sound reasoning the fact that all circus animals are subject to abuse, whether the active abuse mistakenly labeled “training,” or the “passive” abuse of enduring lives confined to small traveling cages and chains, forced to perform in ways unnatural to them, it is hard to justify exotic animal acts under any theory.

Animal Outreach of Kansas proposes only to ban exotic animal acts of the kind found in traveling circuses, not truly educational uses of wild animals such as those that might be conducted by 4-H clubs or Operation Wildlife. Moreover, the proposal is not to ban circuses, rather only the exotic animal acts that some circuses contain. There are many truly entertaining circuses that rely on great creativity and feats of human skill to entertain.

I hope Mayor Dunfield, and all the other commissioners of Lawrence and Douglas County, will keep an open mind until they have fully considered the issue.

Mary Prewitt,

Lawrence