Vegetarian Star

Jack Hanna, who has been vocally supportive of SeaWorld since the incident involving a trainer being killed by a whale at the park, remains positive about the organization.

In an interview with DIS Unplugged, the zookeeper shared his thoughts on the park and animal safety.

On continuing programs at SeaWorld despite trainer deaths:
Does an accident or a death at NASCAR or Indy or even sometimes in certain sports around the world hesitate people in going? The answer’s no. Not just for that, Dawn (Brancheau), whose memorial service is this weekend, gave her life doing something – as her family said, what she loved to do. She loved to educate people. The millions of people this young woman has educated over the years is phenomenal.

On the possibility of future tragedies:
Things happen, yes. Will things happen again? Of course they will. It could be the Columbus Zoo. It could be any zoo throughout the country – the 220 zoos and aquariums. Because we work with safety of our visitor first and safety of our animals – that’s our number one goal, but could something happen? Of course it could happen.

On more government regulations for educational programs at parks like SeaWorld:
Yeah… well, I hope they don’t change anything at SeaWorld. That’s my opinion. I would think people in Washington would have other things to worry about right now. Was Dawn’s death a tragedy? Sure it was. It’s incredible, one death, anybody’s death is a tragedy. But think about other things that are tragedies: the war, the economy, job loss, I could go on and on. You’d think in Washington they’d consider working on things like that that are a little more important than trying to figure out… you know, SeaWorld does it the best there is, period.

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Jack Hanna appeared on the Early Show where he discussed the recent tragedy of the death of trainer Dawn Brancheau by a killer whale.

Early Show co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez questioned SeaWorld’s judgement for keeping Tilikum, given the fact the whale had been implicated in the death of other trainers.

Hanna defended both SeaWorld and the practice of keeping whales in captivity.

“I take my hat off to SeaWorld to take a killer whale that someone said we should euthanize, (and) bring it to SeaWorld,” Hanna said.

“We do everything we can (to put) the safety of our animals and visitors first. The SeaWorld in-vitro planted, they can now take sperm and eggs and have a baby killer whale. Let’s say 20, 30 years from now, there’s 200 killer whales left in the wild. Let me tell you where we’re going to go: We’re going to go to SeaWorld and see what to to save this magnificent creature. That’s how valuable it is for what we’re doing with research. I hear all these other people commenting with killer whales. Give me a break. Seaworld are the ones that know more about killer whales, and the millions of dollars they spend this rescuing whales is unbelievable. And we put them back out in the wild. So no one hears about this.”

What’s your take on whales being kept in marine parks like SeaWorld?

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