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Peta blasts Moorpark College for dooming exotic animals to a miserable life ‘performing’ in cheap actshttp://www.peta.org/mc/NewsItem.asp?id=6746 For Immediate Release: Contact: Moorpark, Calif.--- PETA has fired off a letter to Moorpark College President Dr. Eva Conrad, urging her to close the school’s Exotic Animal Training and Management Program. PETA’s request follows reports that one of Moorpark’s "graduates," a baby orangutan named Rocky, will be used for photo ops aboard a riverboat casino, along with other animals from federal law violator Steve Martin’s Working Wildlife. Rocky was born to an orangutan given to Martin by disgraced Las Vegas animal exhibitor Bobby Berosini, who was caught on tape repeatedly beating the apes with steel rebar so that they would not take their eyes off him during his tawdry animal act at the Stardust Casino. PETA points out that infant orangutans and other baby animals trained for the entertainment industry are traumatically torn from their mothers before being forced to perform repetitive, confusing, uncomfortable, unnatural, and nonsensical tricks and eventually discarded by the industry. Left in peace, a baby orangutan would remain with his mother for eight years. Martin has sold unwanted great apes in Animal Finders Guide, a publication that caters to exotic-animal auctioneers, trophy-hunting-facility operators, breeders, dealers, and the seedy exotic "pet" trade. Martin also discarded a chimpanzee named Bucky at a squalid roadside zoo, misleadingly called the Amarillo Wildlife Refuge, when Bucky reached adolescence at around 7 years of age—a common fate for great-ape "entertainers" who eventually become unmanageable. Ape trainers are careful to hide the inherent cruelty of using baby and juvenile orangutans and chimpanzees for props. A primatologist who spent 14 months working undercover for a California facility that trains great apes for the TV and film industries witnessed trainers kicking, punching, and beating chimpanzees to make them obedient. "Moorpark has no business acting as a shill for an industry that exploits, deprives, and beats baby animals for a few cheap tricks," says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. "We give Moorpark College a failing grade in compassion and urge Ms. Conrad to immediately close down this embarrassment to her institution." For more information, please visit PETA’s Web sites WildlifePimps.com and NoMoreMonkeyBusiness.com. PETA’s letter to Moorpark College President Dr. Eva Conrad follows. |
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July 13, 2005
Dr. Eva Conrad, President
Moorpark College
7075 Campus Rd.
Moorpark, CA 93021
Dear Dr. Conrad:
We have been contacted by many people who are outraged that an infant orangutan from Steve Martin’s Working Wildlife was brought to Moorpark’s Exotic Animal Training and Management Program soon after he was born and trained by 57 students over a period of 8 months. The July 10 Arizona Republic ran an announcement that this endangered baby ape would be appearing on a riverboat called the Colorado Belle from July 15 to 23, to be used for photo ops.
This is a tawdry and cruel business, and it does not reflect well on a college that has so much more to offer than courses in how to dominate and manipulate wild animals.
Given that you have taught psychology for so many years, I’m sure you have a keen understanding of what it means for this baby orangutan to be taken from his mother. The story is that his mother rejected him and that he had to be "rescued." As we all know, infant apes and monkeys must be taken from their mothers and reared by humans if they are going to be successfully trained. The infants are terrified without their mothers and the mothers mourn their loss, just as human mothers do.
Dr. Conrad, it is 2005. Won’t you bring Moorpark into a more enlightened era and put an end to the Exotic Animal Training and Management Program? Meanwhile, I hope that you and Brenda Shubert will write to Steve Martin and tell him that you disapprove of the baby orangutan, Rocky, being put on a riverboat to be used as a prop.
I can be reached at 757-622-7382. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Mary Beth Sweetland, Senior Vice President
Director, Research & Investigations Department
