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  • From: Benjamin Bayliss <ctrkgrendel AT yahoo.com>
  • To: gorillagroupiesforum AT yahoogroups.com, Chimps <chimpsiknow AT yahoogroups.com>, Apes <apes AT yahoogroups.com>, Monkey <monkeywire AT lists.ibiblio.org>, Save The Primates <Save_The_Primates AT yahoogroups.com>, primaterights9 AT yahoogroups.com
  • Subject: [monkeywire] Primarily Primates works to reclaim inhabitants
  • Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 04:45:23 -0800 (PST)

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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Subject: [monkeywire] Indian state's solution to monkey menace involves
'laser sterilization, ' unemployed youth
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(Thanks to Josh Greenman)

Indian state's solution to monkey menace involves 'laser
sterilization,' unemployed youth
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/01/indian-states-s.html

Posted by Mike Carney at 01:38 PM/ET, January 03, 2008

We have some bad news for the thousands of wild monkeys who have been
wreaking havoc in Himachal Pradesh, India. The mountainous state says
it plans to train young people to perform "laser sterilization" on the
animals.

"Affected districts would be identified and local youth involved in
the process, who would be provided training in capturing and
sterilization by the experts," Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal
says in a statement quoted by the Associated Press.

As we told you in October, a band of wild monkeys was accused of
killing New Delhi's deputy mayor.



  • [monkeywire] Primarily Primates works to reclaim inhabitants, Benjamin Bayliss, 01/04/2008

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