Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

chimpanzee rescue

Seattle store Urbanweeds is our new best friend

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This post is from Lauren Glickman, CSNW board member and event coordinator extraordinaire

A warm thank you to our friends at Urbanweeds, Steve and Tim, for hosting a Weeds and Needs benefit to help us! They donated 25% of their day’s tally – and we raised a whopping $400. We had a gorgeous sunny Saturday where people came by to shop for spring plants, planters and fun gifts as well as dropping off sheets and blankets for our Great Chimpanzee Nest Request. Urbanweeds has generously agreed to be a drop-off location for blankets so the chimpanzees always have plenty of nesting Lauren of CSNW and Steve or Urbanweeds all smiles over the successful sale!materials.

Thank you so much to everyone who made this a great success – and we hope to do it again at the end of the summer – so keep your eyes open for our announcement.

Jamie and choices

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Jamie is someone who could be referred to as a “character.” She clearly likes attention and demanded a lot of it from me and the other Direct Care Committee members who accompanied me on my first visit to Buckshire to meet the chimpanzees. Jamie was the most gregarious of the group and was full of energy. She was clearly pleased to have the rapt attention of new people and really enjoyed having her feet tickled (with newspaper) and playing chase.

The first physical feature that I noticed about Jamie was that her belly had almost no hair. This was obviously due to “over-grooming” – Jamie picks out the hair on her belly and the skin underneath the hair. Over-grooming is considered a form of self-mutilation and can be the result of a stressful, unpredictable life or a sign of utter boredom. Often, this type of behavior gradually disappears when a chimpanzee is moved to a sanctuary which provides a stimulating environment.

A big element that is missing from the day-to-day life of the chimpanzees at Buckshire is the lack of choice. Born into captivity, Jamie’s entire life has been determined by the humans who claimed ownership over her. Her early years were spent as a “performer” in a circus, and then she was passed on to the biomedical research industry. There are very few opportunities to make choices in her daily existence at Buckshire. For Jamie, I believe this will be the biggest benefit to her new life at CSNW. I imagine that once she figures out that are so many things that she can do and ask for, she will probably be quite demanding of the time and energy of the staff at the sanctuary. And they will, no doubt, be elated to indulge her desires.


Diana