Subject: Bob Barker Video Exposé: Bears Abused, One Shot in N.C.
PETA
Dear Cindy,
PETA has completed an undercover investigation of Chief Saunooke Bear Park (CSBP), a roadside collection of bear pits in Cherokee, North Carolina. CSBP confines bears to desolate concrete cells, where they are forced to beg for food and are deprived of all that is natural and important to them. Renowned game show host and animal rights activist Bob Barker has joined PETA in calling for them to be rescued.
Bettie and other bears at CSBP "sit there and bite … metal," according to their keeper, breaking their teeth. An expert attributed this behavior to the substandard environment at CSBP.
PETA's investigator found that the bored and frustrated bears turn endlessly in circles. One of them routinely rocks back and forth—a sign of profound deprivation and stress.
Bears bite the pits' metal cage bars, which breaks their teeth. This painful condition can cause bone infections and requires veterinary care, but PETA's investigator never saw a veterinarian at CSBP. Workers sometimes leave the bears, who have a remarkably well-developed sense of smell, trapped in enclosures with their own waste all day long.
CSBP's manager and bear handler admitted that workers deny bears food because, "If you feed them … they ain't gonna eat for people." The manager boasted on video that he sprays water at one bear "all the time … to get his ass up" and force him onto display. The park's bear handler was caught on video saying it took "20 shots … in the head" to kill one of CSBP's bears and that there is "[n]othing better than a bear that's been eating bread and apples all its life. Meat's good."
The manager was recorded admitting that he gets high at CSBP "just to change things up." One worker called Native Americans, who own the park land, "long-distance corn ni**ers."
PETA submitted its evidence to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and asked that it confiscate CSBP's bears. We need your help now to get these animals to safety, where they can live like bears instead of pacing year after year on concrete.
Please take a moment to join Bob Barker and request that the USDA immediately confiscate all bears from CSBP and place them in a safe, accredited sanctuary.
Thank you—these bears need all the friends they can get!
For all animals,
Daphna Nachminovitch
Senior Vice President
Cruelty Investigations Department
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
