A group of residents on Tuesday requested the city rescind its decision made on Monday night through a 4-2 vote.

“There is a very large number of concerned residence (sic) who are absolutely disgusted in this ruling, we will be doing all we can to correct this,” Justina Dimitriou wrote to council on behalf of them.

“We implore you pass this onto the councillors, as we will be proceeding (to) action with various media outlets in our town and on a national level.” 

Another of the 15 to 20 citizens behind the message, Jesse Melt, said councillors were overly influenced by animal rights supporters who did not live in Wodonga.

“They need to just involve the town in this decision,” Mr Melt said.

He attended one of Lennon Bros Circus shows on Gateway Island in July and saw the performing lions which sparked the council move to ban troupes with exotic animals from hiring municipal land.

Mr Melt, 25, said based on attendances at Lennons he never suspected the formal move, initiated by councillor Kat Bennett, to stop circuses using council land would succeed.

“They had that many soldout shows, we thought our opinion would come across because we voted with our feet and our wallets,” he said.

The group is on Facebook with Save the Circus Wodonga and plans to rally outside the council.

“We want to go down to council and hold a protest on the street and show how many people have our opinion,” Mr Melt said.

“They’re restricting what we can do in our free time.

“They’re telling us what we can or can’t enjoy.”

Mr Melt said they acted after reading The Border Mail’s report on Monday night’s meeting and were particularly annoyed by Cr Bennett and councillor Danny Lowe saying there was “overwhelming” public support to ban circuses with exotic animals from council land.

Meanwhile, councillor John Watson suggested on Tuesday that circuses with exotic animals could use the Wodonga showground, which is made up largely of private land, in the future.

The president of the Wodonga Show Society Len Hogan was non-committal when he was asked if his group would be willing to host circuses.

“It would be something the show society would have to talk about,” Mr Hogan said.

“I don’t feel like committing an opinion one way or the other.”

In the late 1990s, the showground hosted touring circuses, including Ashton’s, which featured performing elephants.