Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Call the NIH today to help the APF chimpanzees

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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!

Happy Birthday, Negra!

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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!!