The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

[Benjamin Bayliss <ctrkgrendel AT yahoo.com>]

  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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>From brooklynite282 AT gmail.com  Sat Jan  5 13:45:20 2008
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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.