A Fair With an Elephant? No Fair, Say Protestors

The elephant ride at this weekend’s Manhattan Beach Old Hometown Fair will draw dozens of adoring children, their parents--and animal rights activists brandishing signs saying “Shame!” and “Is this the way you teach your child compassion?”

The demonstration, which will also feature a protester in an elephant costume with chains around his neck and feet, is being organized by the South Bay chapter of Elephant Alliance to protest the two-day fair’s most popular attraction.

“When you see an elephant ride or see one performing at a circus, it may seem fun or innocent,” said the group’s co-founder, Julie Sanchez-Hassan. “But it’s a very stressful, abnormal and unnatural life for these animals, and the bottom line is, somebody is exploiting them for money.”

Fair officials say they carefully checked the company that is providing the elephant for the fair, and that the animal is healthy and well-treated.

“If the community says ‘Eh, we don’t want an elephant,’ hey, I don’t have a problem with that,” said Susi Farrell, vice president of the fair’s board of directors. “But for 15 years, the community has said ‘Are you going to have an elephant there?’ They’re looking forward to it.”

Controversy over the issue has upset the fair’s volunteer board of directors, which has staged the fair for the past 21 years to raise money for local charities. The fair will take place Saturday and Sunday at Live Oak Park, at Valley Drive North and 21st Street. An arts and crafts show will be set up along Valley Drive.

“It’s like a giant maelstrom over this thing,” Farrell complained. “(The elephant ride) is a very small part of the fair. It makes no money for the fair. And yet it is taking a lot of energy of everybody on the board.”

Sanchez-Hassan, a Manhattan Beach vegetarian who wears no leather and commutes to her job in Santa Monica on a bicycle, said she became interested in the plight of elephants at last year’s fair when she saw a trainer jabbing an elephant with a metal hook at the end of a wooden pole.

Larry Sammarco, an elephant trainer at San Diego Wild Animal Park, said the stick, known as an ankus, has been used by elephant trainers for at least 3,000 years.

“It’s like a spur on a horse,” Sammarco said. “It’s not made to poke holes in them. It just puts pressure on them. . . . There’s no way anyone would use them to injure an elephant.”

Sanchez-Hassan was nevertheless outraged by what she saw.

“I said, ‘Never again will I allow this to happen in my hometown,’ ” Sanchez-Hassan said. “Manhattan Beach is a city that prides itself on being environmentally friendly, family-oriented and progressive. This is not something the city should endorse, support or sponsor.”

Sanchez-Hassan began reading about elephants and six months ago decided to create a local chapter of Elephant Alliance, a San Diego-based coalition of animal rights organizations working to improve the plight of elephants in captivity.

Armed with articles and videos about elephants, she asked the fair’s board of directors in June to cancel the ride. Board member Carol Nee researched the matter before the board decided last month keep the elephant ride.

“Nobody wants to see animals hurt,” Farrell said. “But how much weight is a child on an elephant?”

Said Nee: “Basically, we felt we were being pushed into a corner and weren’t really given enough time. We couldn’t cancel the elephant ride without some financial loss and without having to come up with something else on short notice.”

Nee declined to give the name of the company that is providing an elephant for the fair or to disclose how much the board will pay to rent the animal. The vendor is also providing a camel for children’s rides at the fair, but that has not stirred controversy.

Sanchez-Hassan said she believes a camel ride is “just as bad” as an elephant ride, but that she decided to focus her protest on elephants because she knows a lot more about them.

“All this comes down to is somebody making a buck and taking these animals out of their natural habitats and exposing them to lifelong enslavement,” she said. “And that goes for the ponies and the petting zoo too.”