Tigers allowed to return to UniverSoul Circus for Thursday’s Bronx performance
The city Health Department had blocked the animals from the performance but a lawyer for the circus said they had worked out the issues and the tigers would be back for Thursday night.
JEANNE NOONAN/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
The tigers will be allowed to return to the UniverSoul Circus Thursday for the performance in the Bronx.
From: nydailynews.com
BY BARBARA ROSS
April 3, 2014
The Tigers are back in the Bronx.
UniverSoul Circus said it will resume using the tigers Thursday — two weeks after the city barred the animals and the circus’ elephants until health officials were satisfied that the animals were healthy and well housed.
“We’re still working through the issues with the elephants and we’re making great progress. But the tigers are coming back today,” Alan Briskin, the circus’ attorney in Alpharetta, Georgia, said in a telephone interview.
Briskin said the animals will definitely be in the show Thursday evening.
Briskin said the three elephants will continue to be held on a farm outside the city until health officials say it’s okay.
He expected that to happen by the weekend.
TRACY, JOHN, FREELANCE/TRACY, JOHN, FREELANCE
A lawyer for the circus hopes its elephants can return by the weekend.
Briskin said the three elephants will continue to be held on a farm outside the city until health officials say it’s okay.
He expected that to happen by the weekend.
The Health Department ordered UniverSoul to remove its tigers and elephants on March 20 after it denied the circus a permit to use them in their shows which continued to run near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.
The animals’ absence disappointed fans, especially children.
The dispute between the circus and the city was disclosed Monday when UniverSoul filed papers in Manhattan Supreme Court suing the city over its decision to impose tough new rules on the use use of wild animals.
City vets complained that UniverSoul’s three tigers were housed in cages where they didn’t have enough room to stretch and the elephants had not cleared their annual test for tuberculosis.
The circus responded by creating an exercise pen for the tigers where they will run with trainers twice a day; they said a second, more reliable kind of TB test on the elephants produced negative results.
UniverSoul which has come to the city in every Spring for the last 18 years is due to finish its Bronx shows Sunday.
It opens in Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn on April 10 and then goes to the Roy Wilkins Park in Jamaica, Queens on May 1.
A health department spokesman said the department agreed to let the tigers return “after UniverSoul provided adequate housing and containment for the animals. The elephants will be allowed to return to New York City following negative TB tests.”
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/tigers-allowed-return-universoul-circus-article-1.1744428#ixzz2xwWLrykW
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