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Happy Earth Day 2015!
It’s the day to get your green on! The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin established this day to inspire people to take action for the planet and confront environmental challenges great and small. Now the movement is an international one, with the Earth Day Network holding…
Talking gibbonish
Gibbons are well known for their vocal expertise. In most species of gibbon, a mated male and female will duet loudly on a regular basis. Their songs can be heard up to a mile away, under the right conditions. This kind of communication is thought to help defend their territory and establish their presence as a…
Spring has sprung!
At IPPL, we are glad that the bipolar weather of March is behind us, and the warmer weather of April has brought happy smiles to all our faces. In addition to the sunshine, we have been experiencing a welcome profusion of blooms around the IPPL sanctuary. For the past several weeks, the daffodils planted…
Vote and win! Who will be Mia’s prime-mate?
Mia is the newest arrival at our gibbon sanctuary. A charming, fluffy, 23-year-old widow newly retired from Mississippi’s Jackson Zoo, she came to IPPL March 13. And she’s ready for love! But who will be the lucky bachelor? She has four to choose from: Louie-Louie, Maynard, Gus, and Spanky. Guess correctly who she’ll choose,…
Mama Mia!
We are delighted to announce some great news: we have a new gibbon at the IPPL sanctuary! Mia is being retired from the Jackson Zoo in Mississippi. Her previous mate, a gentle soul named Cookie Man, sadly passed away last June. That left Mia a widow. In addition, she had proved to be incapable…
Gabi, the gibbon ambassador
Last week we were delighted to receive a visit from the director of the Gibbon Conservation Center, located in Santa Clarita, California. Gabriella Skollar managed to dodge the iffy weather we’ve been enduring on the East Coast to give a presentation to our animal care staff and share her experiences. It was a rare bi-coastal…
It’s the Year of the Gibbon!
The lunar calendar may have just ushered in the Year of the Sheep, but according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, 2015 is actually the International Year of the Gibbon. And it’s not a moment too soon. If you include the larger-bodied but closely-related siamangs, as many as 19 species of gibbons…
Nothing says Valentine’s Day like a pair of happy gibbons!
Among the apes, gibbons are the best representatives of true love. Gibbons are unique among all our nearest kin in that they are monogamous (or nearly so, anyway). Although we are gradually learning more about the variety of social behavior seen in wild primates, same-sex adult gibbons generally do not tolerate each other’s close…
U.S. primate import statistics for 2014
1. Imports are up 20 percent. For the second year in a row, primate imports into the United States have increased. And not just a little bit. In 2014, the United States imported about 4,000 more primates than in 2013. That’s 23,465 monkeys and apes—as opposed to 19,466 in 2013 and 17,488 in 2012. …
Bioko Island: The next Costa Rica?
With 11 species of primates and large stretches of as-yet-unspoiled forest habitat, Bioko Island (which lies just 20 miles off the west coast of Africa) has the highest primate density of any African country. That’s according to Justin Jay, Program Co-Director of The Drill Project. Justin returned for a repeat visit to the IPPL sanctuary…
Remembering the Bangkok Six case
Dianne Taylor-Snow has been a wildlife crime investigator and photojournalist for IPPL for 25 years. She’s also a dedicated board member and even has an IPPL gibbon named after her. She recently visited IPPL for a few days, and she shared with us her reminiscences about one of IPPL’s signature cases: the smuggling of six…
“Don’t pay too much in taxes!”
“Do you own stock in a non-retirement account? If so, you probably are looking at paying capital gains tax on your 2014 return because it has been a good year for the market. Did you know you can reduce those taxes by gifting stocks that have appreciated during the year to a qualified non-profit? By…
A science field trip to IPPL
When I was elementary school, we got to go on the occasional low-key field trip, like a day hike in a county park to identify local wildflowers. A trip to a private primate sanctuary would have been beyond imagining. But that’s what a group of lucky students from Mason Preparatory School in Charleston got to…
IPPL’s Small Grants Program is there from the start
For many years, IPPL has worked to locate overseas organizations doing great work below the radar of large funding sources and invited them to apply for financial support to our Small Grants Program. Many of the groups to which IPPL provided seed money when they were brand-new and struggling have grown into large, successful organizations.…
More than ready for the Day of Caring 2014
Today is the Day of Caring, a day when thousands of volunteers from local businesses donate their time and talents to help schools and charities in our area. The Trident United Way organizes this annual blitz, and IPPL has taken part since 2004. Until last year, the Day of Caring was always held in September…
Weeble-wobble pumpkins
Since it’s pumpkin time, our artistic animal care staff came up with a number of creative carvings and presented the fruits of their labors to our gibbons. Our gibbons mostly like to munch the seeds and excavate the stringy “pumpkin guts” from the belly of the pumpkin-beast. Sometimes that can be more of a…
Happy, healthy Halloween!
The IPPL gibbons have been enjoying some pretty nifty Halloween treats this season, thanks to our creative animal care staff. We shy away from offering our gibbons sugary snacks that are only good for promoting cavities and diabetes and instead go for healthy treats. But, as we like to say around here, sometimes it’s all…
How you can tell you’re in love with baboons
Joselyn Mormile knew she was in love with baboons the day she went into town to do some shopping in the South African province of Limpopo. She had been working at the C.A.R.E. baboon rescue and rehabilitation center, located near the Kruger National Park. C.A.R.E. is somewhat remote, and volunteers and workers don’t usually leave…
