Lions are ”smashed in like sardines” and grizzly bears can`t stand up in their cramped cages, a Humane Society investigator charged Thursday after inspecting the animals belonging to a stranded Soviet circus.
Lisa Landres, a field investigator for the Humane Society of the United States, said ”nobody is taking responsibility” for the 54 animals, lions, bears, dogs, monkeys and horses, belonging to the troubled Great Soviet Circus Bim Bom.
After the circus went broke several weeks ago in a dispute between its American managers and its Kuwaiti backers, leaving a string of debts, 125 top Soviet circus performers were stranded in a Georgia motel. The animals ended up in Newburgh, N.Y., in care of the Alex Nichols Agency, a Long Island-based firm hired to transport them to performances.
Landres said that although the Nichols agency had done its best to care for the animals, they were stuck in ”horrible conditions,” with all but the horses living in the ”very small, old, dilapidated cages” used to transport them and legal only for that purpose.
Under U.S. regulations, Landres said, the animals must be housed with
”enough room to move around and perform normal behaviors-and they don`t have that in these cages.” She said she had asked the Agriculture Department to investigate.
Department spokeswoman Marlene Stinson said the agency is investigating. ”There are three adult lions-two females and one male-that are all in one cage about the size of a normal office-size desk, 6 feet long,” Landres said. ”They`re smashed in like sardines.”
”A grizzly bear over 7 feet tall is in a cage that`s 4 feet tall,” she added. ”It can move maybe 6 inches in either direction. It`s pathetic.”
Landres said the animals have been in the cages at least a week and are taken out ”a half hour at a time.”
Ed Hayes, operations manager for the Nichols agency, said, ”We`re adequately caring for these animals to the best of our ability.”
Hayes said his agency had spent $77,000 on the animals and that the circus had ”bounced $47,000 in checks on us.”
Andy Trueman, road manager for the circus, said he and others were hired by a Florida-based Kuwaiti group, International Show Business Inc., to manage the act. He said the backers abandoned the circus after providing far less money than promised.