William Kerwich hasn’t performed a circus show since March. Instead, his family’s travelling circus has been parked on a plot of land in southern France, his lions and tigers confined to their pens and his main tent packed up. Kerwich can only guess when the COVID-19 crisis will ease enough for the government to allow his circus to resume entertaining crowds. Even then he faces another threat to his livelihood: a likely ban on wild animals in circuses. “We might lose our animals, but also our profession, our tradition,” he told Reuters. William Kerwich, owner of the Royal Circus and President of the Circus and Shows Animals Union, feeds Molly the hippopotamus at the circus home base in Senas as circus shows remained shut as part of COVID-19 restrictions measures to fight the coro...
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The exotic animals are confined to small paddocks, the acrobats have been grounded, and the clowns aren’t able to make an audience laugh anymore. The coronavirus has brought the curtain down on the Zavatelli Circus, at least for the time being. Unable to travel or perform across Europe, the French family-run operation is waiting out the pandemic in a car park in the southern Belgium town of Gembloux - and quickly running out of funds to feed its animals. An employee of the Zavatelli Circus owned by the French family Dubois, walks with a camel in a parking lot in Gembloux, Belgium November 26, 2020. REUTERS/Yves Herman “For us, the confinement is very difficult because we are not working. We have no cash flow,” said circus director Kevin Dubois. The Zavatelli Circus typicall...
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