[monkeywire] Primarily Primates works to reclaim inhabitants

Benjamin Bayliss ctrkgrendel at yahoo.com
Fri Jan 4 07:45:23 EST 2008


  Web Posted: 01/03/2008 12:18 AM CST
  Cindy Tumiel

  Express-News 
  Stephen Tello isn't as nimble as the chimpanzees that are destined to live in this dwelling, a spacious open-air edifice of reinforced steel with 20-foot-high ceilings, outfitted with natural grass carpeting and elaborate climbing structures. 
  But the executive director of the sanctuary Primarily Primates Inc. gamely tries, scaling a ladder and clambering about an elevated walkway built to withstand the force of animals that are five times stronger than the typical human. 
  The place is pretty close to perfect in Tello's eyes. Just one thing is missing: the chimpanzees. 
  They're living blithely in a sanctuary in Louisiana, unknowingly part of a bitter legal battle over their fate that continues almost two years after they were retired from a cognitive research laboratory at Ohio State University. 
  Their transfer to Primarily Primates in spring 2006 was the spark that ignited controversy over conditions at the 30-year-old sanctuary that was one of the first to offer refuge to unwanted monkeys, chimps and other exotic animals that came from research laboratories or the pet trade. 
  People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sued, bringing accusations of animal hoarding, financial mismanagement and even substance abuse by founder and longtime executive director Wallace Swett. 
  Eventually the Texas attorney general got involved, tossing the sanctuary into court-supervised management. More than 300 animals were moved or euthanized because of poor health. 
  The state settled its case in April, returning Primarily Primates to a restructured board and management that since has poured money and time into refurbishing habitats and working to restore the sanctuary's tattered image. 
  That work has included completion of two enclosures that were promised for the OSU chimps when the university sent the animals and $324,000 to the sanctuary. 
  The animals, though, remain at Chimp Haven in Keithville, La., where they were sent under court order in 2006. 
  "All we need now is to receive our members," Tello said as he stood in one of the new enclosures. "I already know they are coming back. We were not in the wrong." 
  The habitats represent one piece of the change that has come since Friends of Animals, a Connecticut-based animal welfare organization, rescued Primarily Primates at the height of its legal distress in 2006. 
  Priscilla Feral, a longtime friend of Tello and Swett and executive director of FOA, got her organization to pay the sanctuary's legal bills and pony up another $1.3 million to get it on sound financial footing. An expected merger between Primarily Primates and Friends of Animals will be completed this month, when FOA board members take over the helm of the San Antonio sanctuary. 
  Now Tello gives tours to show off the difference a million dollars can make. No longer does the sanctuary run with a handful of bedraggled staff that barely can keep up with feeding and cleaning. There are 15 animal caregivers on the payroll, including a veterinarian who has a mobile clinic at her disposal and a primate behavior specialist who's well recognized by excited, screaming chimpanzees as she makes afternoon rounds with today's "enrichment" activity: paper lunch bags stuffed with popcorn that she flings into their habitats. 
  There also is a landscape designer, who recruited Eagle and Girl Scouts to help plant trees and build elaborate nests in the aviary, and who painted the animals' new cinderblock sleeping quarters a pulsing shade of lime green that made Tello wince. 
  The bigger task, Feral said, is repairing bridges with donors and supporters who were scared away by "the angry mob" of organizations that criticized and sued Primarily Primates at a time when it needed help. 
  "When you want something renovated and to be improved, you write a check and help it along," Feral said. "That's what we did. I wasn't a critic on the sidelines. 
  "They had nothing nice to say about the sanctuary and they've convinced the donors that they should try to give up on it." 
  Individual donors are coming back, Tello said, with help from a revamped Web site, www.primarilyprimates.org, that features videos of playful animals and takes issue with the organizations that sued. 
  There hasn't been any outreach to PETA or other critics, though. Litigation is pending across the country over animals in Oregon, Louisiana and South Carolina that Primarily Primates wants to see returned. 
  Linda Brent, president of the 200-acre Chimp Haven, said she is happy to hear about the changes at Primarily Primates, but sees no good reason to return the seven chimps. 
  "We feel they are doing very well here and their well-being is best served by their remaining here," Brent said. 
  Brent and Don Feare, a Fort Worth attorney who represents Chimp Haven, don't want the animals to endure another transport, which would involve sedating them and disrupting their lives. Feare said Primarily Primates wants the animals back because it believes the chimps will help it raise money. 
  "You've got to wonder about their real goal here," Feare said. "The fact is (the chimps) are getting the best possible care where they are. There is no justification for moving them, except that (PPI officers) want them back so they can make money." 
  Lynn Cuny, executive director of Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Inc., another San Antonio-area sanctuary, expects to make her first trip to see the refurbished Primarily Primates this month. Her sanctuary took about 20 monkeys, bobcats and birds when the sanctuary was under court control, and hasn't been asked to return them. 
  "There was no question that things were in bad shape. I was encouraged that (Feral) and her organization stepped up to do something about the situation," Cuny said. She thinks Primarily Primates should drop its quest to get the other animals returned. 
  "I think they should go ahead and let them stay where they are and then continue to do what they are doing at Primarily Primates, which is to continue to improve things there," Cuny said. 
  Longtime executive director Swett, forbidden by the court settlement from working or living at the sanctuary he founded, now is unemployed and living in an apartment on the Northwest Side. He is rankled at accusations that he has alcohol and drug abuse problems. Swett said he is under a doctor's care for depression and looking for work that will utilize his experience with unwanted wild animals. 
  "It's a torment to not be around the rescues," said Swett, who drove from Boston to San Antonio in 1978 with a van full of abandoned monkeys and then persuaded a donor to give him 8 acres of land for the sanctuary. "I don't want to be knocked down by some unsubstantiated rumor about substance abuse. I want to be seen as somebody who did something good." 
   
  ctumiel at express-news.net 


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