Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Diana

For the Fan Club

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You did it! With over 20 donors pitching in, we’ve received enough in pledges and donations to purchase the “Big Ass Fan” Evaporative Cooler that was on our wish list!!

I enjoyed reading everyone’s gift notes for donations made online, and your generosity has buoyed me into the weekend.

We should receive the evaporative cooler next week, and we’ll be sure to update you on how cool the chimpanzees think it is.

Thank you to everyone who pledged and donated!

 

Don’t forget to register for HOOT! so we can celebrate together all that you’ve helped the sanctuary accomplish these last few years.

This Life of Fortune

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Two fundraising updates and a story about our bovine friends today.

First, yesterday alert blog readers took it upon themselves to start a group fundraiser for a much-desired, literally named “Big Ass Fan” evaporative cooler. Right now we have $895 pledged towards the $1,899 cost of the fan, with $1,004 left to raise. I myself have pledged $100 and have been having pleasant visions of receiving that cooler.

If you would like to participate, you can email me ([email protected]) and let me know your pledge amount. Donations towards the fan can be made online on our donation page (just specify in the gift note section it’s for the cooler), or you can mail a check to the sanctuary at PO Box 952, Cle Elum, WA 98922. You can donate now or pledge first and donate once I let you know that the total has been reached. Thank you all so much!!

Second, counting today, there are only three days left to take advantage of Early Bird pricing for the HOOT! gala! The gala is a pretty big deal in terms of fundraising but also in terms of connecting with supporters. We are hoping to see many familiar and new faces in-person in Seattle on September 16th!

For those not in this area or otherwise unable to attend the fundraising fête, you can still participate! We’ll be having an online auction open to anyone, and for those who buy a virtual VIP ticket for just $20, you will also receive a special invitation to an exclusive Zoom tour of the sanctuary to take place on Sunday, September 11th at 2pm.

A big shout-out goes to our sponsors of HOOT! 2022. Numerous individuals are now sponsors in addition to generous Gala Sponsor Concord Construction. What would we have done without them these last few years with all of the expansion!! We are so grateful to have worked and continue to work with them to expand the lives of the chimpanzees and beyond honored to have their sponsorship for the gala.

Also a big thanks to Happy Hour sponsor Martha Faulkner Real Estate. Martha was a very helpful board member for years and is an all-around animal lover, giving part of her commission to multiple animal groups through her business, hence her website: homes4petlovers.com.

If you are interesting in sponsoring as a business or an individual, you can do that directly here or if you’d like more information, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Third, it’s hot, ya’ll.

Today was my day to do “cattle care”. In the winter, that means giving our four bovine friends hay, mucking out the barn, and making sure there is an ample supply of water.

In the early summer they are able to free-feed in the pastures, helping us with fire control, so we don’t need (yet) to supplement their food. They aren’t spending as much time in the barn, so there’s less mucking to do, though we do try to pick up in areas where they congregate to keep the fly population under some control.

With the addition of the large pasture on the property above the original sanctuary property this year, you just never know where you are going to find the cows.

Today, I couldn’t find them at all.

They weren’t at the barn, where I stopped to make sure the water trough was full.

And they weren’t in the pasture by the pond, where I have been finding them on most Fridays since they’ve been given access over a month ago.

I followed their well-worn path down towards the spring, and found them doing exactly what they should be doing in 100+ degree weather, hanging out in the shade, ready to stare me down.

But wait, where was Betsy?

Seriously, where was Betsy? I called her name. No response. I called louder. Still nothing.

Despite my best efforts at self-mind-control, I can be prone towards thinking the worst and I was starting to get nervous. Betsy is not usually away from her herd.

I walked further down the path adjacent to the spring. Ahhhh. There she was.

In the patch of lush greenery at the edge of the spring.

She too was keeping cool right near the water.

On my way back across the property, I spied another mom laying low in some shade.

It makes me so happy that Betsy, Meredith, Honey, and Nutmeg can, like momma deer, follow their instincts and choose the smartest spot to be on the property.

They are no longer beholden to the humans making all decisions for them or viewing them as a means to their own ends. They are residents of this land. Not as unlikely as the chimpanzee residents across the way, but, like the chimps, while not free, definitely freer than many of their species who have been forced into a life of servitude.

By luck or by fate (if you believe in that kind of thing), we get to be a part of their lives.

Celebrate this gift with us by participating in HOOT!, online or in-person. We have a lot to celebrate!

A Life Taken Away, then Restored

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Negra is one of only two or three chimpanzees at the sanctuary captured in the wild and brought to the United States for biomedical research.

Thankfully, the practice of capturing chimpanzees for use in biomedical testing in the U.S. ended in 1976 when they were listed as threatened per the 1973 Endangered Species Act of the United States.

As explained on the website Animal Welfare Law

Cited problems included human destruction of natural habitat, capture and export for research laboratories and zoos, the spread of disease from people to chimpanzees, and ineffectiveness of existing regulatory mechanisms. Simultaneously, the Service issued a special regulation providing that the prohibitions that generally cover all threatened species would not apply to live P. troglodytes and P. paniscus held in captivity in the United States on the effective date of the rule, or to the progeny of such animals, or to the progeny of chimpanzees legally imported into the United States after the effective date of the rule. This exemption was intended to facilitate legitimate activities of U.S. research institutions, zoos, and entertainment operations, without affecting wild chimpanzee populations.

This exemption allowed for Negra, who was captured in 1973, to grow up, from infancy to adulthood, without her own family, within a laboratory as a research animal.

The records we have for her are limited, but we do know that she, along with the rest of her group at the sanctuary, was used in hepatitis vaccine testing. Like Annie, Missy, Jody, and Foxie, she was also used to breed more chimpanzees for research. Negra had a total of four babies, according the records we have, and she did not have the opportunity to be with them because they were taken to be used in experiments themselves.

How did Negra’s past impact the Negra we know today? It’s impossible to  know.

What we do know is that today, 14 years and 39 days after her sanctuary life began, Negra sat in the tall green grass of Young’s Hill and ate her corn at peace.

Caregiver Lizz Playing with Burrito

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Full disclosure, this video was taken a few weeks ago. Lizz was here today and I remembered I had the clips on my phone, so I decided to put them together into a video to add some classic Burrito play to your weekend.

Nuance

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This post was going to be about Rayne and Honey B and what a fantastic duo they are. When they are doing their mall walking in the morning, I can hardly tell them apart. Rayne seeks out the more aloof Honey B for interactions all the time, and has even been joining her and Willy B in the front rooms at night as they bed down.

I captured a few photos of Rayne grooming Honey B today in the sunny front rooms and then converted them to black and white.

These photos are of a touching moment between two half-sisters who were recently united at the sanctuary. When I was watching them interact and taking these photos with the thought of being able to share this moment, my heart was bursting with joy. I’m so glad Honey B has Rayne now, and I’m so glad Rayne has Honey B. It wasn’t easy to get to this moment, but this is what sanctuary is all about.

Then I looked at the photos again. I asked myself how they would be perceived by people who don’t know this touching backstory or maybe don’t know anything at all about Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. What would they see?

We all jump to opinions, myself very much included in that “we”. This tendency often serves us well because we can make incredibly quick judgements that help us avoid harm and allow us to make sense of the world. This ability to quickly assess our surroundings and form judgements, despite its advantages, may just be at the root of all of our societal problems. And there’s no clearer window into that than on social media. We can see a single image and jump to so many conclusions in an instant, even if we have practically no knowledge or real understanding of what we are looking at or what the overall context is.

This has been on my mind for a long time. I know that sanctuaries, us included, censor and filter the images and information that we share about the places where we work. For one, we don’t always trust that “the general public” will take the extra time to gain more information or to consider that they don’t know as much as they think they do about the realities of life in a sanctuary.

For the vast majority of you who are reading this, you get it more than the average person. You’re curious, and maybe you’ve been reading this blog for a bit so you have the broader context. The feelings that arise when you look at images of the chimps comes from that knowledge. But when we post something on social media, it can go out to a bunch of people that don’t have that same knowledge.

Here at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, we made the decision to try not to filter too much. We show all of the spaces of the sanctuary, knowing that when we share a video of the chimps in the front rooms people will say, “that is not a sanctuary because the chimps are in cages.” It’s not the first time I’ve written about this. See here and here.

We value transparency and truth, and we try to sprinkle in the tough stuff in between all the fun and polish. But I think we still fall short. We want to make sure our “brand” is positive and uplifting and shows the stark contrast between “before” and “now.” We have learned through comments what fulfills people’s expectations about sanctuaries, what they respond positively to, and what raises concerns or confusion; this learning process inevitably influences what we share.

It worries me.

I know that other sanctuaries avoid certain subjects altogether, or never allow public photos of certain parts of their facilities. I absolutely understand this. No one wants to spend their evening, after posting a beautiful photo, answering questions that come from ignorance, like “why are you torturing that poor creature. She should be free.” No one wants the place they love and are proud of to suddenly be the target of a social media mob. There are people out there who have zero qualms about fabricating or deeply twisting things, and some of them are able to convince others of their stories.

The problem is, by not sharing more, we sanctuaries are perpetuating the ignorance and the overly idyllic view of what a sanctuary “should” be. I fear that this cycle is getting worse. I don’t know exactly what the answer is. The truth is that it can be difficult to discern a good sanctuary from a terrible facility. A good sanctuary will make  occasional mistakes (it turns out sanctuaries are run by humans, and humans are fallible). Plus, standards change over time (thank goodness).

There’s a whole heck of a lot of nuance when making judgements about a sanctuary or any facility caring for others, and people these days don’t seem to be very good at nuance. We don’t want to hear about grey areas. We want to form an opinion.

If one is truly attempting to ascertain the relative “goodness” of a sanctuary, one place to start is looking for oversight. For example, we voluntarily have a USDA license and are accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries. This is a start, but there are always going to be issues with the standards used to evaluate facilities, the subjective judgements of the humans doing the evaluating, and the decision whether to seek accreditation or not.

I will be sharing the updated interview I did with Jen Feuerstein about the group integration process, and we get into some of the realities of the challenges of caring for chimpanzees in captivity and the incredibly difficult choices that are made in the hopes that their lives can be improved. I promise we’ll share more on other difficult subjects in the future.

In the meantime, here are some more carefully-curated photos of Rayne and Honey B today 😉

Burrito in Recovery

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Burrito spent much of his day just like this:

His friends did cause a ruckus midday that got him up and alert, and, later in the day, I saw him sitting on his “stoop” on the other side of the mesh while Negra groomed him and Foxie checked in on him. But that was enough activity for the day. He didn’t even want to move much to eat his dinner of mashed sweet potatoes.

Since we have had Burrito in recovery many times we know he’s usually out for a day after a procedure, so it was good he was even a little active and eating.

Since J.B.’s post yesterday about Burrito’s procedure, some people were asking how we knew that there was an issue with his tooth. It was an observation made by staff caregiver Kelsi who noticed that the left side of his face was swollen by his nose. Volunteer caregiver Krissy said she had also noticed that and newest staff caregiver Jenna shared a video that showed the swelling, but it was really only noticeable upon close inspection.

Per Dr. Erin, we first tried giving Burrito an antihistamine to see if the swelling went down, which would have indicated some sort of allergic reaction. When that did not result in a significant reduction in the swelling, there weren’t many other options for what it could be, and Dr. Erin started organizing the team in preparation of a tooth extraction. She surmised that it was likely his upper canine on that side.

Chimpanzees have some impressive canines. Willy B kindly allowed me to take this photo today while he was eating dinner in order to show you:

The part of the tooth that is visible doesn’t even begin to reveal the full tooth, though. Here is a photo of Burrito’s tooth that was removed yesterday, cleaned up by staff veterinary assistant Sofía:

You can imagine that it was quite a lot of work to get that tooth, with it’s long root, out of Burrito’s mouth. I’m happy to say that I was not personally in the room when that work was happening, but I could hear the drilling as we were cleaning.

No doubt Burrito will be a much happier man without that issue bothering him. And his smile will likely be even more charming.

Willy B’s missing front teeth, for example, is his signature look; one that he likes to check out whenever he gets the chance:

In fact, this is not Burrito’s first tooth removal at the sanctuary. Several years ago, he fractured his left lower canine and had an upper incisor pulled at the same time. That was when we had a much different set-up for procedures and the chimpanzee would have to be wheeled outside of the building to the back of an RV that J.B. had retrofitted into a medical clinic.

Though the “mobile clinic” worked fine, and was all we could manage given our resources at the time, I don’t think anyone misses those days. We are extremely happy to have a clinic within the building that is much better outfitted, and very grateful to donors who made this possible as part of Phase 1 of the building expansion.

The more procedures we do, the more we realize that there are certain things that would be helpful to have, so we will likely be looking to purchase some more medical equipment for the chimps in the future.

In the meantime, we are forever thankful to everyone who has contributed not just specifically to the expansion, onsite clinic, and equipment upgrades, but also so grateful to everyone who continuously supports the sanctuary, allowing us to continuously improve the care that we are able to provide all of the chimpanzees and the bovines.