Posts Tagged ‘animal rights’

Call the NIH today to help the APF chimpanzees

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Wayne Pacelle, President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, just posted a blog entry about the 202 chimpanzees who are slated to be moved from the Alamogordo Primate Facility (APF) to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR).

Wayne expresses it well, “…the time is past for subjecting chimps to painful and unnecessary research, and much of the world is ahead of us in recognizing this fact.”

Hopefully, all of you emailed Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius after reading our blog post yesterday.

Now there’s something else you can do – call the Health and Human Services switchboard at 877-696-6775 and ask them to halt the transfer of these 202 chimpanzees and permanently retire them from research.

(When I called this number a moment ago, I got a series of menu options. I chose to leave a message for the Secretary of Health and Human Services at 202-205-5445. Perhaps during business hours there are humans who answer the phones. Let us know how your phone calls go.)

The chimpanzees cannot speak for themselves. Please speak on their behalf.

Update on Alamogordo chimpanzees

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Please see our July 16th post, Chimpanzees to be moved for research, for the background information on this story.

Fifteen chimpanzees have already been moved from the Alamogordo Primate Facility (APF) to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in Texas, but we cannot give up. The chimpanzees need us to speak out for them.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has issued a press release asking the NIH to permanently retire all of the APF chimpanzees, return the 15 chimpanzees that have already been sent to Texas and convert the Facility into a sanctuary.

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has made it easy for everyone to contact the NIH about this urgent issue. Please see the HSUS action alert, take action and share with your friends today.

You can keep updated on the campaign to retire the APF chimpanzees by following Animal Protection of New Mexico on their website and their Facebook page.

Negra’s active day

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

Negra’s not the most active chimpanzee by a long shot, but she was all over the place yesterday. Here she is looking out her new window (the photos through the glass turn out blue, so I doctored it a bit. I like the reflection of the clouds).

Negra checking out view

I love this expression!

Negra looking up

She even investigated some enrichment, which she rarely does:

Negra looking through enrichment

Missy and a coconut

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

We put out three coconuts for dinner the other night and they were great for enrichment as well as food – they kept the chimps busy for hours. Missy was not the only one who used a tool to poke through the eye of the coconut and get the juice out. I don’t know if they learned that technique by observing humans or if that’s something they picked up on their own – either way, it’s pretty smart.

I love how this video shows many aspects of Missy’s personality – playful, athletic, a little silly and intelligent.

“Like” Jody’s page on Facebook

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

Hey, did you know all of the chimpanzees have Fan pages on Facebook? Now you do! I just posted a really sweet photo of Jody next to a giant stuffed dog on her page. See her page and “like” it to get all of the FB exclusive content: www.facebook.com/JodyChimpanzee. Search for all of the chimps’ pages by their name and like them too!

Burrito’s new hang out

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

Someone is really enjoying the new LUSH windows

Burrito in front of new window

Burrito looking out of new LUSH window

Burrito was even caught nesting on a blanket in front of the window!

Burrito on blanket in front of window

Happy Birthday, Negra!

Sunday, June 13th, 2010

You may have noticed in the video posted previously that we’ve been keeping a secret from you.

On Friday,  we replaced three caged windows with clear chimp-proof glass. Thanks to a generous donation from LUSH for two of the windows:

LUSH 2 new windows

And Anna Kircher and fellow blog readers for the third window (view of the garden!)

New lower window

If you received the e-newsletter sent out earlier today, you saw photos of Negra’s view and her sitting in one of the windows upstairs.

Here’s a photo of Jody taking a peak out the blog reader’s window downstairs:

Jody peaking out window

and Jamie cleaning the window (apparently we forgot to complete the installation with a wipe-down using a sock):

Jamie wiping window with sock

We’ll be installing four more new windows soon thanks to everyone who donated between March 17th and today for our 2nd Anniversary Fundraising.

We’ll share the final fundraising amount and who raised the most early this week. Thanks, everyone for helping us exceed our goal!!

Seattle Weekly web awards

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest is a finalist for a Seattle Weekly Best of the Web Award! We’re in the category of “Best Use of a Blog to Make Bank.” We’ll find out at an invite-only party on June 17th if we won.

Our friends at PAWS won the award for Best Online Presence – Nonprofit. Congrats to them and fingers crossed for us!

seattle weekly best of web logo

Jamie then and now

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Sanctuary supporter Tamela just sent me an email with the photos below – Jamie the day she arrived at the sanctuary, and the photo of Jamie that Jackie took yesterday.

These photos side by side brought tears to my eyes – tears of joy for the last two years that we’ve known Jamie at the sanctuary and tears of sadness for the first 30 years of Jamie’s life spent living with an animal trainer then in biomedical research.

I have a feeling that we will all be experiencing this mixed joy and sadness this whole week leading up to June 13, 2010 – the 2nd anniversary of the chimpanzees’ arrival.

Jamie before Jamie 2 years later

Thank you all for helping to make Jamie’s second chance at life possible.

Breakfast forage!

Saturday, June 5th, 2010

Summer has been slow to come to Cle Elum, but today was beautiful, so we set up a breakfast forage first thing. Included were frozen strawberries, grapes, chow biscuits, nuts,  smoothie in cups and fresh blades of grass. Everyone went for their favorites among the choices – Foxie for the grapes, Burrito for the chow biscuits, Jamie and Jody for the strawberries, Missy for smoothie, Annie for grass, and Negra for the nuts (while picking up grass for later).