Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

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Negra approaches her cabin

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As J.B. mentioned in yesterday’s blog, Jackie and I caught Negra approaching her new cabin. Unfortunately I didn’t have our camera on me and didn’t want to miss the shot—so this was taken on my phone. I apologize that it is not the best quality and the chimps are pretty small. But, it is super awesome to see Negra sizing up her cabin and getting reassurance from Foxie and Jody. At one point all seven chimps were in the shot. I thought that was also super awesome so I took a screen shot and labeled all the chimps so you can see them all at once.

I can’t wait until Negra makes it all the way inside the cabin!

 

Happy Birthday to Pam Lehnert from Jill!

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Jill Estep has sponsored today in honor of her friend Pam Lehnert’s birthday. What a nice gift!

Pam, as many of you know, has been involved with Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest for a long time. She and her husband Marc attended the open house we had before the chimpanzees arrived in 2008. She’s contributed countless hours, in kind gifts, and creative ideas to make the sanctuary’s events a success. Our events literally wouldn’t be the same without all of Pam’s hard work.

Today, however, the chimps and her friend Jill want Pam to take some time off and enjoy her birthday, whether that’s by savoring her favorite foods or running with abandon. Let Missy be an inspiration – she manages to do both at the same.

missy carrying food

Vote for Crafty Projects

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Back in July, I posted about a “Pinterest Challenge” asking crafty people to take some misprinted sanctuary shirts and make something new out of them. Several people responded. Then the fire hit.  Following up with crafters, updating the challenge, and spending any time on Pinterest ended up being sacrificed for other work.

We did, however, receive three quite phenomenal projects that I’m excited to share with you right now. Please comment on this post with a vote for your favorite (#1, 2, or 3), or, if you’re undecided, tell us what you like about each of them.

 

#1

dog collar sleeves

The first project we received was hand delivered at the Troll Olympics by volunteer Carrie Parker, so she gets the award for the fastest-craft-turn-around. Her speediness did not take the place of quality, though! These better-than-bandana reversible sleeves thread onto your canine companion’s collar to spruce up his or her look and advertise the sanctuary. Aren’t they neat?

 

#2

blanc's shirt basket

The second project we received was made by friend of the sanctuary Blanc Weber. She contacted me and said she wanted to use the shirts for a crocheted basket. Not being all that crafty myself, I couldn’t picture what that would look like. I had no idea you could transform ordinary t-shirts into such a cool and sturdy basket! Blanc said Foxie could use the basket for her troll dolls, but I’m not sure I can bear to give the chimps this creation.

 

#3

Jenny's chimp stamped bag

The third and last project we received was an adorable tote bag hand stamped by former volunteer and wonderfully creative human Jenny Chang. You can probably guess my favorite part of the bag – the troll-inspired pink hair on one of the chimps. The straps of the bag, which I did not capture in the photo, are braided and long, making this a useful cross-shoulder tote, in addition to being a one-of-a-kind craft.

 

Okay, vote away!

 

Take Action Tuesday: How orangutans are affected by the food and personal care products we buy

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Last week we discussed issues that face free-living chimpanzees (and also the other two African apes, gorillas and bonobos). Today I want to take action on a hot topic: palm oil. Free-living orangutan populations are only found on the small islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Since that climate is also really great for palm plantations, which produce palm oil, much of the orangutan habitat has been ripped apart for these plantations. Palm oil is found in almost everything these days—a lot of our food is full of it as well as bath and body products. If the average American opened their cupboards I would guess the majority of the products they have contain palm oil. Watch this great episode of NBC’s Rock Center that discusses the issue in depth.

What can we do? It’s pretty hard to avoid palm oil, but read the labels and choose products that don’t have palm oil over others that do. As the Rock Center article and video mention, the one section of forest known as Tripa has had one company’s permit revoked after an investigation began about the illegal slash and burn agriculture. However, there are still other companies operating in Tripa. Sign this petition to put pressure on the Indonesian government to Save Tripa and the orangutans that live there!

And, since we all really love our vegan butter (which usually contains palm oil), Diana and JB looked up some alternate butter recipes so we could start reducing the amount of palm oil we buy. After doing a small taste test, this is the one that staff decided we liked the best, however we used guar gum instead of xantham powder, and added extra salt.

photo courtesy of The Orangutan Project’s Facebook page

Foxie and Choices

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We’ve written a lot about how one of the most important characteristics of a true sanctuary is giving chimpanzees the opportunity to make their own choices (You’ll find a search box on the right hand side of the blog – just scroll down a bit. Type in “choices” and several blog posts will appear).

J.B.’s post yesterday about all of the different things that the chimpanzees were doing in the morning is an illustration of how the Cle Elum Seven chimpanzees have really embraced the freedom to make their own decisions about what to do.

Another hallmark of a true sanctuary is getting to know the chimpanzees as unique individuals and learning what they like, what they don’t like, and how to make their lives better on an individual basis. That’s really a lot of what our blog is all about, now that I think about it – we’re just inviting you to see this process.

Recently, I took a cue from Jackie and presented Foxie with the opportunity to choose among a bunch of her favorite things by bringing out the bin of trolls and other dolls and letting her indicate which ones she wanted. She seemed to really enjoy watching me pick the dolls out of the bin and set them up in front of her:

Foxie and her many dolls

 

We did this together for quite a while and she ended up choosing about 11 of the dolls (at one point attempting, unsuccessfully, to carry all of them at once).

Here’s the first doll she decided she needed to have:

foxie choosing dora

 

She started to nest with a few of her dolls and put her back up against the fencing to be groomed. One of the Dora dolls obliged, which made Foxie quite happy:

dora grooms foxie

 

Another very important mission of our sanctuary is to allow the seven chimpanzees in our care to serve as examples of the hundreds of chimpanzees who are still languishing in laboratories or in other terrible conditions. We want you to fall in love with Foxie, as we caregivers have, and to use that love to advocate for other chimpanzees in need.

Speaking of advocacy, please continue to share the petition to the NIH insisting on the release 110 chimpanzees to a true sanctuary. As I write this, we have 1,750 signatures to go before we reach our goal of 5,000.

You may have heard that an NIH spokesperson told NBC that the NIH had changed their tune and were now saying that all 110 chimpanzees would be going to Chimp Haven. This, however, was news to Chimp Haven, as you can read in their statement released yesterday. It’s now more important than ever that we keep the pressure on the NIH to permanently retire these chimpanzees from biomedical research and send them to Chimp Haven or another true sanctuary.

“Oh no!” Laundry basket keep away

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Normally we don’t give the chimps laundry baskets, not because they are unsafe (because they aren’t) but because we need them to do all the laundry, to dry all the washed toys, and to have a spot for the day’s enrichment. So, we reserve them for human use only, and the chimps understand that. If they ever get their hands on something they “aren’t supposed to have,” they think it’s pretty funny. Especially Foxie: