These are great news! Remember about Barenaked Ladies cancelling their show at Sea World after seeing the documentary ‘Backfish’ and realizing that the amusement park is in fact a terrible place for marine mammals and in particular killer whales? Well, other bands have followed their steps according to the Hollywood Reporter! Willie Nelson and Heart have cancelled their upcoming performances at Sea World and I couldn’t be happier.
Heart was even pressured by a petition online but it wasn’t really necessary as the band’s guitarist, Nancy Wilson, was very vocal about it on Twitter, first of all she said she didn’t know the show was about to happen in the park:
‘The Sea World show was planned long ago as an Orlando show. Had we known, we’d have said no then. We said no today. Love you all’.
And it was followed by a few tweets about her love for the large mammals:
’@TheOrcaProject I am a big Orca fan. I hosted a nature documentary once called Baby Wild all about Orcas.Ty for speaking up for our animals!’
‘In the Baby Wild documentary I wrote and sang a song for the Orcas! Can anyone find it and post?’
As for Willie, he cancelled on Friday due officially to ‘scheduling conflicts’, but he told a different story on CNN:
‘I don’t agree with the way they treat their animals, It wasn’t that hard a deal for me.’
‘I understand that there are some natural-habitat zoos out there, which is probably OK. But what they do at SeaWorld is not OK’.
You got it Willie! Something apparently happened between the time the picture above was taken and his decision to cancel! May be he heard about killer whale Tilikum’s sad story? And I wasn’t expecting less from a nature and animal lover like him. As entertainers, these people have a lot of influence, and this series of cancellations can’t be good for Sea World. It was about time!