Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Diana

In Memory of Lost Time

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Tobin, longtime fan and supporter of the chimpanzees, erudite and expressive blog commenter, sponsored today’s day of sanctuary in memory of lost time.

She has her own story about the meaning of today with personal memories and global narratives of time and opportunities that have slipped by.

Speaking about the chimpanzees, she shared this poignant sentiment:

“…I grieve for lost time, and for squandered opportunities. I mourn for a planet where people like Lucky and Honey, Willy B and Burrito, should be able to not merely survive as passengers on a proverbial lifeboat, but, moreover should be able to live, and to live their lives in abundance.”

Thank you, Tobin.

Rayne Joins the Men

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J.B. explained our reintroduction experiment last week, and I thought I would do a follow up today since we moved on to the next step.

As a duo over the last week, Cy and Willy B did not interact a whole lot, which is not shocking since they are both somewhat aloof. What we were waiting for was a day when they did three things: played, groomed for at least ten minutes, and used a new social enrichment puzzle.

Throughout the week, we were monitoring pretty closely, often using the security cameras, for signs of who took the lead. It was clearly Cy, with Willy B deferring to him throughout the week. It has been a lot quieter this past week without Willy B getting everyone going in the afternoons. It’s possible he will still be inclined to do this as the group gets bigger. He did make some attempts throughout the week, but because he was separated from the larger group, they did not have the same level of anxiety or feel the need to respond in the same way that intensified the situation and ended up in conflict.

This morning, I watched on the cameras as Willy B displayed toward the other group, and then I watched as Cy took over the display, with Willy B retreating. This seemed to serve to remind everyone that he outranks Willy B. It’s nice to see Cy express confidence in this way, and we hope he keeps it up as we add more chimps.

Rayne is the second chimpanzee to add because she is the highest ranking female in the group and therefore supports Cy in his leadership role. She also has been able to develop a positive relationship with Willy B and generally isn’t as intimidated by him as some of the lower ranking females in the group. So, the idea is that Willy B will continue to develop his relationships with Cy and Rayne and understand, without having the back-up of Mave and Honey B, that he is definitely subordinate to Cy, and, in fact, that’s really the best place for him and for the group.

Speaking of… we have created some fun groups for the friendship bracelets that we have in the Comfort and Joy online auction! These bracelets were made by two young ladies – Holly and Juliet – who came along with their parents on a vacation to Cle Elum while their veterinarian mom, Dr. Kathleen Olson, filled in for Dr. Erin while Erin was away a few weeks ago. They (the bracelets and the whole Olson family) are so sweet! Check them out, and be sure to check the auction every day, as we’ll be adding more items!

When I was closing up, I spied Honey B who had tucked herself into her nest, the epitome of comfort:

 

Drama and Dora on the Bray

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I mentioned this incident in a comment on my blog post from last week. There was some interest from blog readers to see the footage of this fight in which Dora is interested enough to go onto the Bray, but apparently only wanted to watch, not participate, as she made a break for it when the intensity increased.

Dora can be a force when she does get involved in conflicts, so it’s just as well that she chose to stay out of it this time.

While fights are not uncommon, even in groups like Cy’s that fight more than the average, the amount of time they spend in conflict is minuscule compared the amount of time they spend in friendship.

Most of their days are filled with comfort and joy… which is why we are holding the third annual Comfort and Joy Quid Pro Throw online auction from October 31 – Nov 20. We will be adding items throughout, so check in daily.

*New this year* – if you register for the Comfort and Joy online auction, you’ll be a guest (virtually) at Lucky’s birthday on November 6th! So, don’t delay, register today.

 

Compassionate Conversations of Care: Protecting all you cherish

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The conversations we have with those around us help care for the people and causes we love—just like we care for the chimpanzees at the sanctuary. Whether it’s Jamie, with her many interests and endless curiosity, or Cy, who loves magazines and sitting quietly with his caregivers—our goal is to provide those in our care with a safe, nurturing home that honors their individuality and helps ease them into different stages of life.

October 21-27 is National Estate Planning Awareness Week, and we encourage you to have compassionate conversations of care with your loved ones.

As I’ve gotten older and lost many relatives and friends, I know that that these discussions might feel overwhelming, but it’s a crucial step in ensuring your wishes are known and honored. To help, we’ve gathered a checklist of questions to talk through with the people close to your heart:

  • Guardianship: Who would be the designated guardian for any minor children or pets?
  • Financial Management: Who would we want to help manage our finances? Who would be our financial power of attorney?
  • Health Decisions: Does our medical power of attorney know our health concerns?
  • Readiness: Are the chosen family members or friends aware of these roles and willing to take them on the responsibility?
  • Legacy: What causes do we want to support long into the future?

Our partner, FreeWill, provides free, intuitive tools to help you create a will and other estate planning documents. You can also plan your beneficiaries for non-probate assets like an IRA or 401(k).

By including a gift of any size to CSNW in your will or designating us as a beneficiary of one or more non-probate assets, you can build a legacy that gives a second chance to deserving chimpanzees for years to come. Past legacy gifts have enabled the chimpanzees to thrive in their sanctuary home and have helped us work towards big goals for the sanctuary.

Start these conversations today, and craft a plan that cares for all that matters to you. 

If you have included us in your will, please fill out this brief form so we can recognize your generosity!

Adaptability and Resilience

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I don’t think it’s possible to work with chimpanzees and not think about their remarkable adaptability and resilience. Tragically, their ability to adapt is why some chimpanzees have been able to survive in some of the worse conditions imaginable, for years on end.

Sanctuaries are often the first opportunity for some chimpanzees, depending on their past circumstances, to do dozens, if not hundreds (perhaps thousands?) of new things. Walking on grass, climbing, brachiating, foraging for wild plants, or even living in a group, can be new experiences.

It can take time to break beyond the life that they have adapted to – that they’ve been forced to live.

Chimp Crazy has made me think about this too. I wrote last week about the HBO documentary series and my questions about the general public’s perception regarding chimpanzees. I appreciate everyone who commented so thoughtfully (and also all who donated during Giving Day for Apes!)

Chimp Crazy has caused me to ruminate on so many issues. I talked a little about this in a recent interview on KOMO TV in Seattle, along with local photographer who we’ve partnered with – Alex Bogaard.

The main human subject of Chimp Crazy, Tonia Haddix, and other chimpanzee owners interviewed on the documentary, have only seen chimpanzees in the context of being pets or entertainers. People who own primates as pets have witnessed these primates adapt, to the extent that they can, to living in a their homes and performing tricks.

What they don’t see are the hundreds of things missing from that primate’s life. They don’t see or perhaps don’t care that they have forced their pet primate, a wild animal, to fit into an entirely different culture and environment from the environment and culture they evolved to experience in order to have a full life.

A couple of days ago, the Primate Awareness Network at Central Washington University hosted a talk by Dr. Andrew Halloran about his work with both captive and wild populations of chimpanzees. The topic of his talk was resilience. He shared stories of the incredible resilience of chimpanzees he has studied as part of the Tonkolili Chimpanzee Project in Sierra Leone who have adapted to live in fragmented forests after their original expansive habitats were destroyed in order to create large areas of farmland for crop exportation to other countries. And he spoke about the resilience of chimpanzees in captivity who he has worked for in zoo and sanctuary settings.

I was thinking today about the difference between adaptability and resilience and how they interact. It’s not always a good thing to be able to adapt to a bad situation. I’m sure everyone can think of examples from their own lives where you found that you had adapted to circumstances that did not serve you well. If you’ve become accustomed to one way of living, even if that way of living is detrimental to your physical or psychological well being, it can be incredibly difficult to take a leap when presented with new and better choices. We’re not so different than other primates in this way. We can experience resistance and fear of the unknown. And that’s where resilience comes into play.

Adaptability is what enabled Willy B to live in a laboratory for the first five years of his life. Resilience is what allowed him to climb the crow’s nests in his two acre enclosure last week for the first time. Sometimes primates need a nudge to discover their own resilience, like a plum in a location you’ve never climbed before.

Chimpanzees’ PR Problem & Giving Day for Apes

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Long before the HBO docuseries Chimp Crazy aired, I’ve been concerned about the view that humans have of chimpanzees and how they are portrayed in the media.

Since Chimp Crazy, those questions and concerns have amplified.

Andy Gray, Director of the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance, and I have been hosting discussions via zoom about Chimp Crazy with the goal of talking about and processing the content of the documentary and its potential impact by having expert guests join us. You can watch recordings of these discussions on the sanctuary’s YouTube channel.

Our latest discussion included guests Debbie Metzler, Senior Director of Captive Animal Welfare at PETA Foundation (and former CSNW caregiver) and Kate Dylewsky, Assistant Director, Government Affairs at Animal Welfare Institute (AWI).  Kate shared that she has been lobbying for animal issues with AWI for eleven years, and all of those years have included lobbying to pass the Captive Primate Safety Act, which was first introduced in 2007. This bill would make it illegal to possess, buy, or sell monkeys and apes as pets (current owners will be able to keep the primates they own but will be required to register their animals, and it will be illegal to breed them).

The good news is Kate said she’s never felt more hopeful that the Captive Primate Safety Act could pass, in part because of the success of the Big Cat Public Safety Act that was put into law at the end of 2022 and also due to the spotlight that the Chimp Crazy docuseries has shone on primate (particularly chimpanzee) ownership.

You can help by checking to see if your representatives are co-sponsoring the bill in the house of representatives and the senate. You can enter your address on this page to have personalized messages sent to your senators to encourage them to become co-sponsors if they are not already.

Federal law regarding the ownership of primates is long overdue, and if Chimp Crazy has a positive impact on this industry, potentially protecting tens of thousands of pet primates in the future, it’s well worth it.

I do still wonder, after people have watched Chimp Crazy, what is their view of chimpanzees?

The docuseries shows the two extremes that seem to remain in most people’s imaginations and delusions about chimpanzees; either they are viewed and treated as funny stand-ins for humans or even surrogate children,  dressed up and laughed at, or they are vicious heartless beasts who will “eat your face off.”

We have written about this problem before, of course. On the one-year anniversary after a chimpanzee named Travis severely mauled a friend of the person who owned him, I shared this blog post, which linked to J.B.’s eloquent and still highly relevant blog post he wrote after the incident with Travis that resulted in his death.

Travis’ story, or rather the human-side of his story, is told in Chimp Crazy, with rather alarming details. Will that be what viewers remember the most? Is that okay, given that the story is factual and certainly an clear example of why chimpanzees never, ever, belong in people’s private homes?

I know, though we will never have the reach of an HBO documentary, we play a role in how chimpanzees are viewed. We post every single day on this blog and we share images and videos on social media.

While we try to place the chimpanzees and their stories into a broader context of what the sanctuary is about and what we believe – that chimpanzees do not belong in captivity – that context would be easy to miss if someone is casually scrolling or sees a single blog post.

Like today, I found Burrito with a yellow “cheese” Nylabone in his mouth and a purple scarf jauntily thrown over his shoulders.

Burrito was once a pet too. His story could have ended in tragedy.

I want to share these images and moments, because it shows Burrito being the delightful person he is, as misplaced as he is as an individual. But today I share them with all of these thoughts in the background.

I will wonder how many people will simply see a silly chimpanzee without knowing who he is or what he’s been through, and how he still needs people to help him continue to live a good life where he can be himself without misguided preconceptions on the part of the humans who have power over him.

One way that you can help Burrito and many other apes this week, giving towards organizations like ours that work to right the wrongs that humans have inflicted upon them, is to support Giving Day for Apes. This day of giving, organized by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, is both a fundraising opportunity and a friendly competition among the participating sanctuaries and rescue centers.

We are hoping to compete for the most dollars raised for a North American sanctuary during the “Power Hour” of 10 – 11 a.m. PT / 1 – 2 p.m. ET on Tuesday. I hope you’ll consider making a donation to Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest at that time!

And I hope you’ll be a part of letting people know what you know – that chimpanzees are complicated and amazing. They are both violent and silly. They are extremely social and adaptable, adopting aspects of the cultures into which they are born, but they remain wild animals. They need us to understand and respect them for who they are so that we can help their wild populations thrive and end the need for keeping them in captivity.