Six Flags Discovery Kingdom is a roller coaster park that uses animals for entertainment.  Advocates for the Animals at Six Flags call upon the Park to release the animals to certified sanctuaries and sea pens and to end their contract with elephant abusers Have Trunk Will Travel. 

Elephants and dolphins at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom are forced to give rides and perform silly tricks. Tigers, walruses, and other animals are forced to perform in shows. Six Flags has put profit ahead of the animals' basic needs and uses outdated and abusive training techniques to make the animals perform.

According to Michael Muraco, who was employed as the Director of Animal Care at Six Flags from 2007 to 2014, the marine mammals were not fed proper diets. Also, the water system for the dolphins was inadequate for the size of the facility and didn’t work properly. The ozone generator failed, leaching hazardous chemicals into the pool. Six Flags compensated for the lack of ozone by raising the levels of chlorine.  A USDA Inspection Report attributed poor water quality to “recurring respiratory issues, eye problems, and fungal infections” and to the deaths of dolphins.  Thirteen dolphins have died since the Six Flags took over the park, including two dolphin calves who died in 2014 and an eight-year-old dolphin who died in October 2015.

Over and over, Muraco complained to higher management about the water-quality issues.  For years, promises to improve the water-quality system were given, but no improvements were made. 

Muraco, who was fired for revealing to the USDA the many issues that violated federal regulations, reported in court documents that the Park was not putting enough salt in the salt water. Half of the dolphins were in pools with no temperature control, and the water temperature had gotten dangerously low and higher than 95 degrees, putting the dolphins at risk. Medication was used in lieu of proper training and medical care, and the dolphins were addicted to unnecessary drugs. The vets were performing unnecessary and improper medical procedures, including spaying a seal under anesthesia without the use of a ventilator, which resulted in her death. 

The water quality in the walrus pool has been so poor that the walruses are “mostly blind,” and they have been malnourished. In 2015, Sivuqaq died at age 21 of heart failure.  (According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Pacific walruses can live up to 40 years.) In January 2016, Siku, a 22-year-old walrus at Six Flags, was suffering from a parasitic infection that caused “rivers of snot” so severe that she had become a mouth breather.

For decades Six Flags held elephants captive and forced them to perform in shows and give rides.  Since Six Flags Corporation took over the Park in 1997, seven elephants have died, mostly prematurely from captivity-related causes. In 2014, 34-year-old Bertie Mae was euthanized after she broke a hind leg.  Six Flags admitted that they were forcing her to practice a trick for a performance routine when she fell and broke her leg.  A broken leg is not a death sentence for an elephant unless she is at Six Flags.  Two elephants with broken legs went to the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee and thrived.  One of them, sixty-seven year-old Shirley, is still going strong. 

After Bertie Mae’s death, the Park dumped the last two surviving elephants in a facility in Oregon, which was listed fourth in In Defense of Animals’ 2015 Ten Worst Zoos for Elephants (the facility did not pay for Liz and Valerie).  The elephants could easily have gone to PAWS’ sanctuary two hours away in San Andreas where they would have had room to roam and freedom from the abuse of bullhooks (weapons shaped like fireplace pokers designed to inflict pain).

Six Flags now contracts with notorious elephant abusers Have Trunk Will Travel to give elephant rides.  You can watch the handlers’ brutal training methods in this undercover video provided by Animal Defenders International:  http://bit.ly/1GqkJ33

Odin, the Bengal tiger, is housed right under a huge roller coaster where this normally shy, nocturnal being is subjected to screaming people, the roar of the roller coaster, and a loud speaker blaring right outside his enclosure all day.  You can see a Six Flags trainer hitting another tiger in the face in this video:  http://bit.ly/2dnQndJ

There is evidence that tigers are overcrowded in cages off exhibit and that resources have been withheld from the avian and terrestrial facilities.

The animals deserve better.  Please sign and share this petition asking Six Flags to release the Six Flags animals to certified sanctuaries and sea pens and to end their contract with elephant-abusing Have Trunk Will Travel.