No circus in Pittsburgh this year, Shriners say

7 injured by camel at last year’s show

No elephants, tigers or camels will be headed to the city this fall, as the Shrine Circus has called it quits.

“Well, it won’t be in the city of Pittsburgh. It wasn’t an option for us this year,” Robert Addleman Jr., corporate secretary and business manager for the Syria Shriners, said Thursday.

Stricter animal treatment regulations and an injurious bucking camel at its 2018 circus in Pittsburgh led to the big top collapsing for the local Syria Shriners’ biggest fundraiser.

Mr. Addleman did not say if another location in the region has been chosen.

“Everything’s a business decision, so I can’t say for sure that we will hold the circus in another location, and I also can’t say that the circus is done for,” he said.

Proceeds from the circus, held almost every year in Pittsburgh for nearly seven decades, benefit the local fraternal order, including its philanthropic efforts for the Shriners Hospitals for Children across the nation.

The local show draws roughly 30,000 people for fives shows over several days.

“Some years have been better than others,” Mr. Addelman said, adding that the organization usually expected to make $100,000 or more.

At the circus’s last Pittsburgh showing in September 2018, a startled camel that began bucking during a session of free rides injured six children and one adult — causing a broken arm for one of the children. A federal inspector found no violations during its investigation of the incident.

The Shriners’ 2018 Pittsburgh circus went on thanks to a judge’s one-time exception, despite Pittsburgh lawmakers enacting stricter animal treatment regulations in December 2017.

The ordinance restricts anyone in Pittsburgh from using pain-inducing or painthreatening devices, like bullhooks or electric prods, on wild or exotic animals.

Circus insurance carriers require the presence of bullhooks — a pointed hook on a long handle — to guide elephants, Mr. Addelson said.

The Shriners organization maintains that animals at their circusdonotfacepainorharm.

In 2018, Mayor Bill Peduto urged Shriners to continue their tradition but without “instruments that cause pain and injury to the animals they use as entertainment.”

The mayor’s office did not have a comment on the Shrine Circus leaving the city limits.

National animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said it supports the Syria Shriners’ decision.

“PETA applauds the Shriners’ decision to join the growing number of temples that are leaving elephants, camels and other animals out of their fundraisers,” said Rachel Mathews, the advocacy organizations’ deputy director of captive animal law enforcement.

Circus acts and animal performers have fallen out of public favor in recent years due to a number of factors, including animal welfare concerns. Ringling Bros. took its final bow in 2017.