IPPL Members’ Meeting 2006

June 2006
Conference Brings Primate Protectors Together in South Carolina

This past March over 100 guests, staff, and volunteers gathered together for IPPL’s ninth biennial Members’ Meeting. IPPL Board Member Dianne Taylor-Snow opened the conference by recapping some of her 2005 travels in Asia on behalf of IPPL and the plight of many captive apes and monkeys she witnessed there. She was followed by nearly twenty speakers from around the world who updated the audience on the status of their activities and shared their personal challenges and triumphs while working with some amazing primates. Here are a few summaries of IPPL's speakers' presenations. To read summaries of all of the presentations and see photos from the meeting, request a free issue of the IPPL News.

An Attentive Audience at the Veterinary Forum

The Kalaweit Gibbon Sanctuary, Indonesia

After a festive buffet, the keynote speech this year was delivered by Kalaweit’s founder Aurélien “Chanee” Brulé. IPPL Board Member Dianne Taylor-Snow, who visited Kalaweit last year, introduced the French native by noting that he has been fascinated by gibbons since he was a child. In fact, the name he goes by now (“Chanee”) is the Thai word for gibbon, “Kalaweit” means “gibbon” in the local Dayak dialect, and the fi rst word spoken by his young son, “Wawa,” is the Bahasa (Indonesian) word for—you guessed it—“gibbon!”

Founded in 1997, Kalaweit is actually pursuing a multi-faceted approach to the problem of orphaned gibbons and siamangs. Kalaweit’s resident apes have been primarily confiscated from traders and from people keeping them as pets, even though it has been illegal to own a pet gibbon in Indonesia since 1990. Chanee estimates that there are about 6,000 gibbons in captivity in that country—and while the last 30 years have seen the initiation of many projects to help Indonesia’s orangutans, the plight of the gibbons has been largely neglected. Kalaweit has stepped into that vacuum and currently operates several facilities on both the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo (Kalimantan) and on the island of Sumatra. Since approximately 15 percent of the animals accepted by Kalaweit test positive for diseases of human origin (including tuberculosis and hepatitis), these animals cannot be released into the wild for fear of infecting wild gibbon populations. As a result, a safe and humane habitat for rescued animals has been constructed by Kalaweit on the 60-acre island of Hampapak, Borneo. Other aspects of the project include protected release sites for healthy animals and a station for collecting data on wild gibbons.

Although Kalaweit is committed to the well-being of the animals in its charge, it also recognizes the need to go to the source of the problem. Many of the animals at the sanctuary were initially pets, so Kalaweit has responded by reaching into people’s homes to convince them of the need to stop this form of illegal traffi cking. For the past three years, Kalaweit has been operating a radio transmitter that is used to broadcast a mix of contemporary music and conservation programming targeting a 15-to 25-year-old audience, thanks to funding by the Arcus Foundation provided via IPPL. Every hour, 24 hours a day, there are five one-minute pro-wildlife messages. This has proven to be a very successful strategy. In every town where Kalaweit FM broadcasts reach, there are no more gibbons for sale in the markets. And if an important official is discovered to be keeping a gibbon as a pet, the station will broadcast his nameto urge him to surrender the animal, since official confiscations are unlikely to be directed at anyone with much authority; this tactic seems to work well, also. So far, two towns in Borneo each have a relay station, and a third will soon be operational in Sumatra, bringing the total number of daily listeners from 60,000 to an estimated 100,000. Kalaweit’s vision: a network of ten relay stations, resulting in a projected one million daily listeners and nationwide coverage. The result: an effective medium for delivering a potent environmental message.

Highland Farm Gibbon Sanctuary/William E. Deters Foundation for Gibbon and Wildlife Conservation Projects, Thailand

Pharanee Deters is the widow of Bill Deters, in whose memory she created the Foundation that now supports the sanctuary that the two of them established after moving back to Thailand from the U.S. in 1991. She shared the hard times the two of them initially faced as they tried to revive their deforested 36-acre plot on the Thai/Burmese border: the lack of clean water, the much-delayed completion of their house. She also introduced some of the now 42 resident gibbons, many of whom had been injured by accident or mistreatment by their former owners: over the years, Pharanee has had to cope with gibbons suffering from such handicaps as missing limbs, paralysis, a broken back, polio, blindness, or psychological problems. Denny, for example, was abandoned at a Buddhist monastery, the fate of many unwanted pets. She was confined to a tiny cage and chronically undernourished, and, as a result of her psychological stress, acquired the habit of pulling out her own fur. The Deters had to beg the monks for three months to be allowed to remove her. Denny still pulls out her own fur (and that of her mate, Max) but at least she now is assured of a good diet, reasonable freedom of movement, and proper companionship.

Life at the remote sanctuary still poses its difficulties. Every three days Pharanee travels 45 km to the nearest town, Mae Sot, in order to buy extra produce for her gibbons, visit the post office and bank, and check her e-mail. This is also where the office of the nearest veterinarian is to be found (who, as a dog-and-cat vet, is sometimes of only limited help in caring for gibbons; more specialized gibbon care requires an even longer drive—600 km to Chiang Mai or 800 km to Bangkok). In recent months, the Highland Farm staff has been busy remodeling and rebuilding some of its enclosures, as the older animal housing stock needs to be replaced after years of exposure to the tropical climate; they are hurrying to finish the current slate of building projects before the rainyseason begins in June. This construction work has been funded courtesy of a grant from the Arcus Foundation (directed to Highland Farm via IPPL), for which Pharanee expressed her gratitude. She also spoke of future rescue missions, including four gibbons to the north, near Chiang Mai, who are no longer wanted by their current owners. Taking responsibility for so many little apes is a lot of work, and it is clear that Pharanee still misses her husband, who was murdered by a disgruntled employee in 2002. That’s why she set up a foundation in his name, she said, “because he tried to help the gibbons, and I don’t want him to be forgotten.”

Endangered Primate Rescue Center, Vietnam

The EPRC is Vietnam’s only primate sanctuary. As its resident veterinarian since 1998, Uli Streicher is in a unique position to observe the stresses on the world’s primate populations. All their incoming primates are confiscated from trade or directly from hunters. As a result, many primates arrive at the EPRC with trap injuries, resulting in paralyzed arms or other impairments. In addition, the majority of the animals housed at the EPRC are leaf-eating monkeys (like douc langurs), who are notoriously difficult to maintain in captivity because of their special dietary needs. In fact, half the workload at the EPRC involves processing the enormous amount of leaves needed to feed their resident animals.

The EPRC does its work under very difficult circumstances. Five of the top 25 endangered primates in the world are Vietnamese—and it’s a hard country to live in, if you’re a nonhuman primate. Eighty percent of the human population is involved in agriculture, and the pressure to clear primate habitat for farms is great. But the primary threat is not habitat loss, but hunting: unfortunately, hunting pressure is very high, and most forests have been emptied of their wildlife even before they are destroyed. Although hunting is generally illegal (and primates have been protected by Vietnamese law since 1992), snares and iron traps are very cheap and many people still own guns, yet another destructive legacy of the war years. Primates are hunted for a variety of reasons: for bushmeat (particularly for the tables of wealthy businessmen and officials in Hanoi and Saigon—and the eating of live monkey brains is indeed practiced in that country), for use in traditional medicines, for tourist display (even in foreign-managed hotels), and, to a lesser extent, for pets. A loris can be bought for less than US$3. So the EPRC willingly sponsors many types of outreach activities: coloring contests for local kindergarteners, a scientific symposium, fieldwork opportunities for students pursuing advanced degrees, national TV appearances, and educating the 10,000 members of the Vietnamese public who tour the center every year. Hopefully, as more people become aware of Vietnam’s unique primate heritage, it will become safe to reintroduce captivebred primates from the EPRC into the wild.

Centre for Animal Rehabilitation and Education, South Africa

Rita Miljo, who founded CARE in 1989, has taken on the task of rescuing and rehabilitating one of South Africa’s most reviled native animals: the chacma baboon. This fascinating creature, she said, really does deserve the epithet Almost Human, just like the title of Shirley Strum’s classic book on baboon behavior. But despite their natural intelligence and intricate social lives, Rita’s “naughty baboons” unfortunately have a long history of persecution by the people of South Africa.

Rita was born and raised in Hitler’s Germany but emigrated to apartheid South Africa as a young girl. She found the system of government in both countries sadly similar. And she eventually discovered that even animals did not have an easy time of it in South Africa, thanks to certain appalling laws. Under that country’s longstanding “Vermin Laws,” five species of mammals have been singled out for extermination by any means necessary—including guns, traps, or poison. The animals classified as vermin include two primates, vervet monkeys and baboons. South Africa, noted Rita, was colonized by European farmers, and as in so many other parts of the world, any animal that dared to interfere with their way of life had to go. Baboons were among the animals deemed “pests.” As a result, any seven people could get together and form a “hunting club,” which would entitle them to trespass on anyone else’s private property and shoot as many “vermin” as they could find. Rita has had to deal with people such as these. One particularly unpleasant neighbor, she recounted, would amuse himself by gathering together a few friends, lining up on Rita’s fence-line, and shooting baby baboons on sight. One dayRita and some of her young charges, out for a Sunday stroll, walked right into his ambush. Two of her babies were killed outright, the rest fled; she spent a week retrieving five injured young baboons from the bush. She managed to get the story on TV, and so strong was the public outcry against her neighbor’s behavior that he eventually sold his property and left. But he was just one of many who needed to be reformed.

Sadly, Rita reported, there has been little success getting the vermin laws abolished, even after 12 years of democracy. (They are still in full force in six of South Africa’s nine provinces.) And Rita, like her baboons, still faces persecution. Last year she rescued and transported a desperately ill young baboon across provincial lines, to bring him to CARE for rehabilitation. She was prosecuted for not getting the proper permits for this, but she was eventually found “not guilty,” as it was recognized that she had to act immediately in order to save the animal’s life. This judgment was criticized by some for going “against official policies”—but suggests a change may be in the air.

CERCOPAN, Nigeria

Although most nonprofit/non-governmental organizations avoid working in Nigeria, which is widely regarded as rife with corruption, CERCOPAN has been making a difference in that country since 1995. Nicky Pulman has been the Deputy Director of CERCOPAN (the Centre for Education, Research and Conservation Of Primates And Nature) for three years. She noted that ninety percent of Nigeria’s forests have been cleared away and many of its monkeys killed for bushmeat. CERCOPAN currently cares for six species of monkey: five guenons (including Sclater’s guenon, which is native only to Nigeria) and one type of mangabey (the red-capped variety). CERCOPAN currently houses over 100 monkeys at different stages of rehabilitation. Most of these rescued animals were initially bushmeat orphans. A mixed group of mona monkeys and mangabeys have been released into an electric-fenced enclosure in a forested area (which received its first monkeys in 2003), and there are plans to release some monkeys into a protected “core area” of the forest, too, later this year. The “core area” is protected jointly by the Iko Esai community and by CERCOPAN, which works closely withthe chiefs and villagers to promote the quality of life for all in exchange for this commitment. CERCOPAN thus makes quarterly payments to the people of Iko Esai and shares revenue from eco-tourism with them. CERCOPAN also helped bring clean spring water to the community last year, has established microcredit schemes, and has promoted alternatives to bushmeat hunting. As a result, logging in the protected area has ceased, and in the past five years only three minor instances of trespass have been noted (and these were not for hunting, only for the gathering of “non-timber forest products,” such as wild salad).

CERCOPAN has always placed considerable emphasis on outreach and education. Their Education Center at Calabar has been active ever since CERCOPAN was founded, and another center was set up at their field station in Rhoko in 2003, where they hold field lessons in botany, zoology, and ecology and receive some students for field research. Seven conservation clubs have been created to increase environmental awareness, and CERCOPAN’s recent “Bushmeat can be Dangerous Meat” campaign featured a parade and festival aimed at children (potential future consumers). This work seems to be paying off. “According to recent surveys,” said Nicky, “90 percent of the hunters queried said they did so only from necessity; 97 percent of the hunters said they didn’t want their children to grow up hunting bushmeat.”

Ikamaperu, Peru

Hélène and Carlos Palomino founded this 70 hectare sanctuary for woolly monkeys and their primate friends in the Peruvian Amazon in 1997. Hélène had been doing anthropological fieldwork among the indigenous people of the Alto Mayo valley of northeastern Peru. She and Carlos bought the property from slash-and-burn agriculturalists and started a reforestation program with the help of IPPL-UK and other European conservation organizations, buying from local communities the seedlings of fruiting trees that would be popular with primates. Ikamaperu is now the only primate rehabilitation center in all of Peru. “Among indigenous people, hunting success traditionally confers status,” said Hélène, “although native peoples typically have greater respect for their environment than newcomers, who are interested only in profit.” December through March is actually the “silent season,” when woolly monkeys do not call even if they’ve found a new fruiting tree. This is the season that woolly monkeys get fat, a condition that their hunters prefer, so the animals have learned to move about silently. Still, if hunters come across a group feeding en masse, they will kill dozens at a time. Seventy percent of the animals killed or captured are females and their offspring— the mother becomes smoked meat and her baby a pet.

At Ikamaperu, rescued monkeys experience day-long free-ranging rehabilitation sessions, when they are followed by keepers who maintain a close eye on them. The rescued animals share their forest with 14 groups of monogamous Andean titi monkeys as well as owl monkeys. Hélène and Carlos by now have 14 woolly monkeys and five spider monkeys in their care and do not have space for any more at present, so they plan to focus on conducting environmental workshops with indigenous communities and exposing trafficking incidents in order to raise awareness among the public. In addition, Carlos is currently negotiating with indigenous leaders about protecting a 500-hectare tract of forest situated within a much larger territory; the three leaders with whom he has spoken are all interested in creating a protected area, but in return they are seeking education for their children, help in dealing with unscrupulous riverboat traders, and assistance in getting fair treatment from local authorities. Hopefully, these discussions will be the beginning of a productive partnership that will benefit both human and nonhuman primates.

Jungle Friends, U.S.

A six hour drive south of IPPL will bring you to Gainesville, Florida, and Kari Bagnall’s rehabilitation center for Central and South American primates. There, about 75 unwanted monkeys (with more arriving shortly!) have found a permanent sanctuary and advocates on their behalf. Residents include about five species of capuchins, a couple of species of squirrel monkeys, as well as some marmosets and tamarins. They come to Jungle Friends from research labs, breeders, entertainment venues, animal hoarders (people who compulsively collect large numbers of animals), and pet keepers. These rescued primates come with a variety of impairments from their previous lives. Research animals bear the scars of past experiments, like the owl monkeys blinded by ophthalmology research. Even pet monkeys have often been subjected to a variety of mistreatments: they have been castrated (to “gentle” them), had teeth pulled (to prevent biting), had fingers amputated (to reduce tampering, as with cage locks); they have been choked and thrown against walls to “discipline” them. In their new life, they are provided with enrichment, special diets (especially for the toothless or diabetic monkeys), and socialization opportunities with others of their own species. Jungle Friends also does outreach in the community, said Kari, and offers internships for anyone else who would like to learn more about these wonderful animals—or even start their own primate sanctuary!

Animal Concerns Research and Education Society, Singapore

According to Louis Ng, president of ACRES, the Chinese definition of “animal” translates as “moving object.” This sums up one of the main problems involved in doing primate advocacy in Southeast Asia: a general attitude that tends to regard animals not as living creatures deserving of care and respect, but as objects to be put to use at the discretion of humans. Although Singaporean laws strictly ban the keeping of exotic pets, in last two years ACRES rescued 174 animals (illegal pets and native wildlife), including three primates.

ACRES carries out a number of activities in the public sphere to change perceptions and reality regarding primates and other abused wildlife. ACRES campaigned for improved legislation, which was recently passed by the Singapore Parliament, to increase the maximum fine for smuggling endangered species from S$5,000 and one year in jail to S$50,000 and two years in jail. ACRES has also worked directly on public awareness campaigns: distributing educational postcards promoting animal welfare in public places, placing ads in the local trains (“Wild animals are not pets”), and conducting outreach programs to children in malls and at schools. In the past five years, ACRES has conducted more than 80 roadshows and/or talks.

ACRES is now also trying to get a “halfway house”built to provide long-term housing for confiscated animals as well as for animals that the group is trying to repatriate, because acquiring the proper permits to relocate the animals can take months or years. Since Singapore has been a known hub for wildlife smuggling for decades, ACRES is strategically located to make a significant difference in the lives of many endangered primates.

Stichting AAP, Netherlands

David van Gennep, the director of Stichting AAP, presented an update on its primate protection work in Europe. Stichting AAP is a sanctuary that provides permanent care for exotic animals that have no other options. Although based in the Netherlands, this organization also promotes animal welfare all over Europe by raising awareness, lobbying for better legislation, and helping law enforcement efforts. In the past two years, they have completed about 100 animal rescues, mostly of primates: the illegal trafficking of Barbary macaques is a significant problem, since the animals are easy to smuggle via Spain. David said that his group is working on a total approach to this problem, targeting smugglers, dealers, and buyers at once.

However, there is sadly a lack of sustainable solutions for confiscated animals in Europe. Even such high-profile animals as chimpanzees can get tranded: about 50 lab chimps from Immuno AG (a former private research lab in Austria that had been bought out by another firm in the 1990s) were transferred to the Gänserndorf Safari Park, but the park went bankrupt in 2004. Stichting AAP is still looking for a place to permanently house these apes. Fortunately, Stichting AAP has been working with the Dutch government to build a new complex for former lab apes infected with diseases like HIV and hepatitis C; the facility will be completed within the next couple of months on an island in Almere, Holland.

In addition, for the past six years Stichting AAP has been persistent in getting the proper permits for a facility in Spain, to be called Primadomus, that will provide a space for the lifetime care of healthy groups of monkeys and apes. David said that the city council members of nearby Villena have been cooperative and even hope that the area surrounding the facility can become a nature reserve.

Veterinary Forum: Caring in Captivity

Three international veterinarians hosted an open forum on the care of captive primates in the afternoon prior to the kickoff dinner for IPPL’s 2006 Members’ Meeting. Uli Streicher (the resident veterinarian at the Endangered Primate Rescue Center, Vietnam), James (Jim) Mahoney (a primate specialist who operates the Sanctuary Support Program, U.S., and a frequent consultant for IPPL), and Simon Adams (a wildlife veterinarian advisor who has often assisted IPPL’s U.K. branch) related some of their experiences and took questions from the audience, which included representatives from at least eight primate sanctuaries.

Effective quarantine

The issue of what constitutes a proper quarantine procedure is a basic one, but one that can be problematic if a sanctuary is coping with a sudden influx of animals and limited space. Jim and Uli agreed on the importance of maintaining high standards of quarantine and effective disease screening for new animals. They discussed the appropriate length of time to confine animals as well as the necessity for balancing the need for quarantine with other considerations (for example, most sanctuaries do not have an on-site laboratory to test for diseases). However, judging from Jim’s experiences in Africa, it can be difficult to maintain proper quarantine for any length of time. “Donated rubber gloves and caps will be given away by staff for their nieces and nephews to play with,” he said, “and donated bleach has a way of disappearing.” But since many diseases can pass between nonhuman primates and people, it is important to know the health status of the animals one is caring for. Hepatitis B, for example, can be transmitted from infected nonhuman primates to people and vice versa; it remains one of the most common diseases in the developing world, with 200 to 400 million human cases, Jim remarked. Tuberculosis is also a major problem: this disease has the potential to wipe out an entire primate population. And herpes viruses are difficult to manage, since they may be fatal to one primate species without even causing discomfort to another. Since sanctuary animals have all been in close contact with people prior to their arrival, the opportunities for disease transmission are high.

Incoming emergencies

Uli spoke about some of the typical work she does with incoming animals—much of it, unfortunately, emergency work. For leaf-eating monkeys like douc langurs, it is important to get them on a proper diet right away. All captured monkeys are fed the same thing in Southeast Asia: bananas, rice, and sweet fruit. But this mixture can be fatal for leaf monkeys; these animals have specialized gut flora (bacteria), which are negatively affected by ingesting too much citric acid. Since newly confi scated langurs from different parts of the country may resist feeding on unfamiliar leaves, it can be helpful to place resident animals nearby (fence-to-fence), who can show newcomers what is OK to eat. Of course, this means that both the companion animal and the newcomer must share quarantine. Dehydration is also a problem for many incoming primates, since most animal traders do not give their animals water, to reduce the mess caused by urination. And of course there are injuries caused by capture, mostly snare wounds. Snares for primates can be set up in the trees or on the ground, and douc langurs seem particularly easy to trap. They often arrive with injuries from snares that have wrapped around their arms, legs, even their torsos. Snare wires can cut off circulation and damage nerves, muscles, or tendons, leading inevitably to infection and sometimes even paralysis. However, Uli has found that some function may return to a paralyzed limb seven or eight months later; in any case, adult animals seem to adjust better to a paralyzed limb rather than to one that is missing, so she will amputate only in desperate situations (as when life-threatening gangrene is present). Other injuries from transport include mangled or missing fi ngers, toes, or tail tips. Psychological trauma is evident too, she said. “All primates are traumatized by separation from their group, and some become severely apathetic. Offering visual contact with other animals sometimes helps in these cases, although this is difficult to achieve while maintaining quarantine.”

The nocturnal slow and pygmy lorises present their own problems. “They are easily stressed by too much exposure to people,” Uli remarked. “In addition, lorises often have had their teeth removed so that they will be easier to handle as pets; most of these animals die soon after reaching the EPRC. And some animals just fail to thrive for no apparent reason.”

Birth control

The question of whether to breed sanctuary animals is still controversial. When there is little hope of releasing the animals back into the wild, birth control procedures (pills or implants for the females, vasectomies for the males) are often considered the most ethical route. Vasectomies, however, can fail. Generally, said Simon, the smaller the primate, the harder it is to prevent a vasectomy from reversing. Jim also noted that chimp vasectomies are harder to perform than human ones, so that it’s not unusual to see some surprise babies even in sanctuaries where birth control measures are in place (not always a bad thing, thought Jim, as one baby chimp can provide eight years of high-quality social enrichment for a whole group of animals). Castration is also an option in some captive settings, offered Simon, and this can actually reduce aggression rates in the group. (“The less testosterone, the better,” he remarked.) However, Kari Bagnall of Jungle Friends noted that her castrated capuchin monkeys tend to get attacked by the rest of the group members. Different methods may be appropriate in different circumstances: ultimately, it is the well-being of the animals that is the primary consideration.