Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Diana

Sarah on the subject of healing

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A few weeks ago, two very special people from Seattle’s NPR station visited the sanctuary and interviewed Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest’s Executive Director, Sarah Baeckler. The interview and audio from their visit will air on KUOW Presents on 94.9 FM tomorrow at 2:06pm. Please listen to it live if you’re in the area.

You can also listen to it, subscribe to the KUOW Presents podcast, or download the interview from their website right now. It’s a very moving piece, and I hope you’ll be inspired to contact KUOW to comment, and encourage them to re-air it as frequently as they can. You will learn a lot about Sarah in the interview and why she does what she does for chimpanzees.

Sippin’ menu

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Sippin’ for the Seven is going to be a not-to-miss evening in Roslyn. Get your tickets if you haven’t already. I’ll be updating the event page soon to include local lodging offering discounts to attendees. First, though, check out the food!

Chefs Ben Kulikowski and Frank Schuchman will be preparing these nibbles:

Sausages in three varieties: Italian, Mexican Chipotle and Smoked Apple Sage (the good folks at Field Roast Grain Meat donated a case of sausages for the event)

White Bean Paté

Bruschetta bar featuring the following tapenades: tomoto basil, wild mushroom, and marinated artichoke with roasted red bell pepper

Hummus and crudité

I am hungry already…

Thanks to Sippin’ event sponsors: Poppoff Inc., Vintage Vine, 93.7 The Wind, and Inland Networks

LUSH in store events

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Hope to see some regular supporters and make some new friends at the Sunday, February 28th in store events at LUSH Westlake and LUSH Bellevue. See LUSH’s flyer below for details.

If you can’t make it out, you can always support LUSH and their charity pot program by buying through their online store.

Chimp Eblast from Lush

News on Ning

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A couple of days ago, I added a new feature to the Chimp Sanctuary Supporters network. It’s a  feature that allows members to post links to news stories (or really anything). You can also add your own comment along with the link. I think it will be a nice way for us all to share stories about what sanctuaries are doing and anything that we come across about chimpanzees that we’d like to share with others. Check out Chimp Sanctuary Supporters and click the “News Share” tab to post.

LUSH view

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LUSH – Fresh Handmade Cosmetics – is currently featuring Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest as one of their Charity Pot partners. This means that our information appears on the lid of some of the charity pots sold in their retail stores and through their online store.

charity pot 02674

Thanks to LUSH’s support, we will be replacing two caged windows with chimpanzee-proof glass.

We will do this at the same time as the installation of the window paid for by blog readers Anna K., Denice, Jill K., Julie H., Gayle B., Theresa, Jeani, Candy, Kathy B., Leslie S., Sue and Jack, Stephanie P., Steph and Kurt, Donna A. and Barb in Ohio (big thanks to Anna for initiating the blog fundraising drive for the window).

So the chimps will have three new windows to look out of from the playroom this summer!!

The Westlake and Bellevue LUSH stores will be having in-store events to introduce their customers to the sanctuary on Sunday, February 28th. Stay tuned for more details. And THANK YOU LUSH!

Remembering Travis and the nature of chimpanzees

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One year ago today Travis, a “pet” chimpanzee in Connecticut mauled a woman named Charla Nash and was later fatally shot by police. It was a tragedy that J.B. eloquently wrote about in this blog post: The True Nature of Chimpanzees.

Just a few days ago, a volunteer at a facility in Florida was attacked by a young chimpanzee. Best known  as Chimp Farm, the facility operated as a roadside attraction for decades and was famous for chimpanzees trained to box with humans.  Chimp Farm was shut down by the USDA in 1999. After making improvements to the housing for the animals, and putting the days of boxing chimpanzees behind them, they reopened a few years ago as Suncoast Primate Sanctuary. Though it’s difficult to parse out the facts from all of the media coverage about the attack, it does seem clear that the chimpanzee, Shawn, escaped her enclosure because those working that day, including the woman who was attacked, did not properly secure and double check the enclosure. In a statement to the press, the volunteer stressed how important it is to follow proper procedure so that escapes do not occur due to human error.

It can be frustrating that these are the stories about chimpanzees that seem to catch the attention of the major media, while there are so many positive stories out there. Chimpanzees are being migrated from a former laboratory to the Save the Chimps sanctuary islands. The Center of Great Apes is expanding  to rescue more chimpanzees. And Foxie at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest is rubbing her toes together and kissing a troll doll as construction is completed on the chimps “greenhouse.”  But we can try to take advantage of the brief and sensationalized focus on chimp attacks to educate others.

The bottom line is that chimpanzees really do not belong in captivity. That is where the tragedy begins. At CSNW we do our best to provide the chimpanzees with a rich and varied life, but it’s not the life they should be living. The deserve to be swinging from the trees, traveling miles foraging for food, living in large social groups, and making nests out of branches. For so many reasons, they can’t live in the wild, so we’ll continue to provide them the best care possible. And we will always keep in mind J.B.’s words: “if we truly love them [chimpanzees], we need to treat them with the respect they deserve, and that includes respect for their complex nature….they are not meant for our world, any more than we are meant for theirs.”