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Speaking up for lab monkeys
Today is the last day to submit a comment in support of a Rulemaking Petition to improve conditions for U.S. lab monkeys. This opportunity (which had been extended two months) expires at 11:59 PM, so don’t delay, and please share with your friends.Here’s a sample comment to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Please feel free…
An Ethiopian travelogue (with monkeys)
Baboons and birds, colobus monkeys and carnivores, hyenas and humans. Former IPPL volunteer Christian Runnels stopped by the IPPL sanctuary last week to give a presentation to our staff on his encounters with wildlife in Ethiopia, where he lived for two years. It’s a great country for primate watching, judging by the photos he…
Do the Funky Gibbon!
How would you like to dance your way to primate protection? It’s easy if you do the Funky Gibbon: here’s how! Download or listen to the 1970s hit single “The Funky Gibbon” via Amazon, iTunes, or Spotify, and IPPL will get a donation that we can use to help care for gibbons at our…
Farewell Glenda
Glenda came to IPPL on May 13, 2013 along with her family: her mate Gary, their daughter Kendra, and son Thai. A Silver Springs, Florida tourist attraction where she and Gary had lived most of their lives was being turned into a State Park. It was urgent that 450 animals, including four gibbons, be re-located…
Invisible apes
We recently received an interesting book from (and written by) Dr. John Steckley, a Canadian anthropology professor who is primarily an expert in some pretty obscure human stuff–he is the last known speaker of the Wyandot (or Huron) language. But, as he states in the opening pages of “Gibbons: The Invisible Apes,” perhaps he is naturally…
Look for IPPL at animal rights conference
IPPL is again a Silver Sponsor of the Animal Rights National Conference, an annual bonanza of practical information, inspiring speakers, and networking opportunities for animal rights activists across the country and beyond. The organizers (Farm Animal Rights Movement) note that this conference is also “the world’s largest and longest-running animal rights gathering, hailing back to…
From chimpanzees to gibbons
Renate Winch knows a lot about chimpanzees. She even knows the secret to hippopotamus bliss (scratch them behind the ears). But this week was her first encounter with a sanctuary full of gibbons. Although she has been an IPPL supporter since the 1990s, her long-time residence in Africa meant that she has not had a…
Homegrown peppers
Hot, hot, hot! It’s hot here in South Carolina, but don’t worry Whoop-Whoop, our homegrown sweet peppers are NOT! The last couple of years we have been trying to grow some additional produce on the IPPL grounds. For years we have done this successfully with fruit. Muscadine grapes have always…
A children’s book on chimpanzees in Cameroon
At IPPL, we take pride in helping fund dozens of grassroots primate sanctuaries and rescue centers in countries where primates are native. One of the sanctuaries we help support is the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Cameroon, which cares for apes that have been rescued from the trade in bushmeat, pets, and animals used for…
You can help monkeys in research!
[Update 6/29/15: The deadline has been extended to August 31, 2015, 11:59 PM! There’s still time to file a comment on the government Web site!] You have a unique opportunity to make life better for lab monkeys! There are an estimated 110,000 monkeys living in U.S. research facilities. Of course, we feel they don’t belong…
We’re keeping our cool!
Yes, we finally have a new cooler! Thanks to the success of our crowdfunding campaign on LoveAnimals.org, we have been able to purchase and install a new second cooler for our fruits and veggies in our Animal Care Cottage. The cottage is where our daily food preparation for the gibbons takes place. Prior to…
Thank you for loving animals!
This week we wrapped up our crowdfunding campaign on LoveAnimals.org: we have reached—and even surpassed—our $4,000 goal! Now we will be able to put those funds toward a new additional cooler to store the bonanza of donated produce we have been getting from Costco. Many, many thanks to our wonderful supporters (including several anonymous friends—you know…
Gibbon art DIY for World Environment Day
Today is World Environment Day, designated by the United Nations as a day of outreach, a “people’s day” of “doing something positive for the environment.” This year’s theme is “Seven Billion Dreams. One Planet. Consume with Care.” Well, have you ever dreamed about getting in touch with the natural world through art? That’s what Maui…
Ape Action Africa: Volunteer update
Ape Action Africa is one of the largest primate sanctuaries on the continent, and IPPL is proud to help support the wonderful rescue work the AAA staff is doing in Cameroon. AAA (formerly the Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund) makes use of many volunteers, and last week the IPPL Headquarters Sanctuary was host to one of…
Our Boeing volunteers: day after day of caring
On Saturday we were glad to welcome back to the IPPL sanctuary a volunteer team from Boeing. We had a group of Boeing employees (plus a few family members) come out to help with some time-consuming tasks (like bleaching our indoor and outdoor enclosures) and some regular tasks that need to be done every day…
How many kinds of primates are there, anyway?
Today is the 10th annual Endangered Species Day, and primates are (unfortunately) prime poster children for it. There are a lot of primates—but they are in a lot of trouble. How many kinds of primates are there? When I first started studying these amazing animals back in the 1980s, there were supposedly a little over 200 distinct…
“Chimpanzee funeral” photographer visits IPPL
By now it’s an Internet meme: the photo of a group of chimpanzees lined up silently in self-evident grief at the death of their community leader and friend, Dorothy. Monica Szczupider snapped that picture in 2008 at the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Cameroon, where she was a volunteer at the time. The sanctuary’s founder,…
Thanks to Costco…
…we have a terrific new “problem” here at the IPPL gibbon sanctuary. For the past few weeks, we have been getting such generous donations of fresh fruit and veggies from our favorite bulk grocery store, that we don’t know where to put it all! Here’s how it started. About a month ago, we…
