Asian elephants - the trademark of the circus, which comes to Philadelphia's CoreStates Spectrum on Thursday - are dying off in their native lands. Since 1976, when endangered-species laws restricted the importing of elephants, the breed has been dying off in America as well.
No elephants, Ringling figured some time ago, could mean the end of the circus as we know it.
So 2 1/2 years ago, Ringling spent $5 million to set up its Center for Elephant Conservation on 200 acres about an hour from its winter headquarters along Florida's Gulf Coast - close enough to major airports for visiting scientists and researchers, but far enough from the distractions that might cool ardor among the elephants, a notoriously hard animal to breed. So far, three elephants have been born here.
Remote as the center is - and off-limits to all but a few invited guests a month - it is in the middle of controversy. Animal-rights activists and some conservationists think that what Ringling is doing is, at best, not enough to save the Asian elephant.
At worst, ``it's cruel and brutal,'' said Rich Frank of Mays Landing, N.J., director of the Circus Information Resource Center of New Jersey. Frank, whose group picketed the circus at New York's Madison Square Garden over the weekend, said he had visited the center twice - with a telephoto lens - before he was chased away. (``I ended up taking pictures from the cattle farm next door,'' he said.)
``The elephants live their lives in pens,'' Frank said. ``In the wild, they would roam free, 20 to 30 miles a day. [Ringling officials] talk about elephant conservation. They're saving them for what? To use them as a profit-making tool.''
