ISSN-1040-3027, Vol. 42, No. 3 December 2015 INSIDE: • IPPL’s 5 Monkey Export Bans • Our Small Grants Program • Ape Action Africa! News In This Issue: Action Item! Page IPPL’s 5 monkey export bans 3 IPPL’s Small Grants Program 10 Dear IPPLA Friend, Note from Shirley Ape Action Africa 15 The year 2016 is just around the corner, when IPPL will look forward to marking The Douc Langur Foundation 21 43 years of our protecting primates worldwide. Thanks to our generous friends The Sunrise Circle 25 around the globe, we made nearly 30 small grants to grassroots groups around the Leave a lasting legacy 26 world during our 2014-2015 giving season, as well as caring for the now-36 gibbons at our sanctuary in Summerville. Indonesia on fire 27 We have had very strange weather here in South Carolina this year, with several spells of IPPL News huge amounts of torrential rain that made it very EXECUTIVE EDITOR tough on our animal care and maintenance staff. Shirley McGreal Fortunately, the gibbons have really solid houses, so they stayed inside safely for many days. MANAGING EDITOR Overseas, we were delighted that Sierra Sharon Strong Leone was declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization on November 7, 2015. Not long after the world began to appreciate the extent of the epidemic, we got in touch with our friends at Sierra Leone’s Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, which we have helped support since it was founded in 1995. Because of the threat of Ebola, volunteers had cancelled their visits, the sanctuary’s eco-lodges were closed, and About the Cover food for the animals was hard to get. IPPL immediately started to raise funds and ultimately IPPL helps support dozens of primate provided over $60,000 in much-needed revenue. sanctuaries and rescue centers around the Fortunately, no chimpanzees contracted the world. One of the most impressive of these disease, and the animal caregivers stayed healthy is Kalaweit, a gibbon protection and rescue and stuck to their posts. Tacugama survived the organization with various locations and epidemic alive and well, thanks to help from outreach initiatives across Indonesia. This IPPL and other organizations. lovely Bornean white-bearded gibbon is One highlight of my year was attending the one of Kalaweit’s resident rescued apes 2015 Animal Rights National Conference in (see page 11). Cover photo © Kalaweit. Arlington, Virginia, this summer. IPPL has had an exhibit at this conference for years. It is held IPPL: Who We Are one year on the east coast and the next year on the IPPL is an international grassroots west coast. This year Hardy Brown, Tina McCoy, wildlife protection organization. It was Linda Wolfe, and I staffed the IPPL booth with founded in 1973 by Dr. Shirley McGreal. help from long-time IPPL supporter Susan Our mission is to promote the conservation Parker. There were many excellent presentations. and protection of all nonhuman primates, I was on two panels and Linda on one. We met great and small. many old friends and made some new ones, too. IPPL has been operating a sanctuary Thank you to all our supporters for their in Summerville, South Carolina, since generous help over the years! 1977. There, 36 gibbons (the smallest of Best wishes, the apes) live in happy retirement. IPPL also helps support a number of other wildlife groups and primate rescue centers in countries where monkeys and Shirley McGreal apes are native. IPPL Founder and Executive Director IPPL News is published three times a year. 2 IPPL | December 2015 www.ippl.org News IPPL and the Five Monkey Export Bans Shirley McGreal, IPPL Founder and Executive Director When I founded IPPL in 1973, my top Thailand into nature and invited them to come priority was to stop the international In late 1974, I was still living in along. They were excited to participate. A trade in primates. I was living in Thailand when I received a message from few days later, a group of students came Bangkok at the time and saw crated the British Royal Society for the Protection to the airport with me. The birds arrived monkeys at Bangkok Airport awaiting of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) asking if safely, and we took them to a nature park shipment to New York. I learned that the I could go to Bangkok Airport to collect where we set them free. But the students monkeys were on their way to lives of a shipment of birds of prey. The birds had were horrified when they saw even more experimentation. It all seemed so wrong. been confiscated at Heathrow Airport, crates of birds of prey awaiting export! I decided I wanted to work to block London, and were being returned to Many were ready to become wildlife this trade, but at the time there were no Thailand for release into the wild. activists then and there. groups taking on this issue. That’s why I had met a number of Thai university I started thinking of ways to bring I started IPPL, and ending the primate students at a recent party at the home of these students into the battle against trade has been one of IPPL’s primary the late naturalist Dr. Boonsong Lekagul. the Thai wildlife trade and came up goals ever since. It’s a goal that IPPL I told them about the shipment of birds due with the idea of recruiting students to has pursued with great success. to be returned to their homeland for release conduct observations of wildlife leaving A rhesus macaque is forced to run on a treadwheel at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) in Bethesda, Maryland, during the 1970s. The electrified footplate delivers shocks to compel the monkey to keep moving despite being subjected to lethal doses of neutron radiation. After IPPL publicized these gruesome experiments, both India and Bangladesh instituted nationwide bans on the export of their native rhesus monkeys. These bans remain in place today. www.ippl.org IPPL | December 2015 3 News IPPL organized teams of Thai university students to log shipments of wildlife out of Bangkok Airport in 1975. When the prime minister realized just how many animals were being sent out of the country on a weekly basis—and under terrible conditions—he placed a ban on the export of all primates, most other mammals, and many species of birds. This ban is still in effect. Bangkok Airport for overseas. The the airport in the 1970s. Those were the verify their contents, but few inspectors next step was to “recruit” the money good old days! were seen on the floor in any case. Most to fund the project. Christine Stevens Close to 100,000 mammals, birds, and just sat in their offices. of the U.S. Animal Welfare Institute, reptiles left Thailand during that ten- After the project wrapped up, we the former International Society for the week period. Several crates contained tried to decide what to do with our thick Protection of Animals (now renamed monkeys, including baby monkeys. sheaves of documents. Mrs. Buri called World Animal Protection), the British One night there was great excitement me a few days later in great excitement. Fauna Preservation Society, the New as two baby Himalayan bears shipped She asked me to make copies of all York Zoological Society, and a very from Vientiane, Laos, were found and the papers immediately, as then-Prime wealthy and well-connected Thai confiscated. Another time, a young lady Minister Kukrit Pramoj had asked her lady, Mrs. Katherine Buri, all pitched named Suchira caught a man smuggling for them. That took hours to do! Khun in. Students from Chulalongkorn, two gibbons. Forestry officials were Pramoj was outraged at what he learned Kasetsart, and Mahidol Universities summoned. They told the man to the from the documents and immediately eagerly signed up. follow their van to the forestry office to placed a ban on the export of all monkeys, The project lasted for a ten week process the little apes. He drove away most other mammals, and many bird period, March 31 to June 6, 1975. For two with the gibbons and never showed up. species, including mynahs. That ban is weeks, teams of students worked round- We figured he had bribed the officials. still in effect. the-clock, then for eight more weeks the Most of the crates were appalling and IPPL was only two years old and teams continued their tasks from 8 A.M. to did not comply with the International had already achieved a great victory for 5 P.M. They searched for crates containing Air Transport Association’s shipping primates. animals, logging every shipment they standards, as implemented on February observed. The students also got a lot of 1, 1975. The crates were not properly India help from “airport urchins,” youngsters constructed, and the food and water In 1973, a total of 25,413 rhesus monkeys who hung around the airport. These bowls were seldom filled. Many animals were imported into the United States from children would take our teams to crates traveled in boxes with tiny air holes, India. The late animal rights advocate hidden away in mysterious corners! Of one-quarter to one-half inch in diameter. Henry Spira discovered that many were course, anyone could go anywhere at Inspectors could not search the crates to being used in military experiments, 4 IPPL | December 2015 www.ippl.org News including some taking place at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1974, I learned about these enormous rhesus monkey exports to the U.S.