Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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eyes on apes

Take Action Tuesday: Another chimp ad + how to help orangutans

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If you haven’t heard, Great Clips had a commercial a couple weeks ago that featured a chimpanzee. Just a day after our alert went out and folks wrote to them, the CEO made a statement saying they would pull the ad and never work with apes again! Victories like this keep the momentum going—your letter writing really does make a difference! On that note please send a quick message to Steak ‘n Shake, who currently has a commercial with a chimpanzee:

Screen capture of the Steak 'n Shake "ultimate dream" commercial
Screen capture of the Steak ‘n Shake “Daydream” commercial

Click on this link to be taken to the action alert which contains contact information and a sample letter. Be sure to spread the word and forward the alert to your friends! And if you haven’t subscribed to our Take Action: Eyes on Apes Alerts mailing list already, sign up now.

Another way you can help apes right now is to sign this petition to Dr. Oz, who recommended his viewers try using palm oil as a healthy alternative oil. Please let him and his producers know that palm oil production is slowly driving orangutans into extinction! For more information about this issue, take a look at this past Take Action Tuesday post.

Thank you as always for speaking up for these apes. Keep up the great work!

Take Action Tuesday: Great Clips commercial

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As we’ve mentioned before, despite a growing public awareness about the plight of chimpanzees in entertainment, they are still being exploited for a cheap laugh. Recently, Great Clips (a nationwide hair salon franchise) aired a commercial launching their new feature, “Clip Notes” with a chimpanzee toward the end. The chimpanzee is seen exhibiting a “fear grimace” – a sign that they were likely beaten or abused prior to the commercial’s production.

great clips
Screenshot of Great Clips’ new ad on YouTube

Please write to Great Clips to ask them to pull the commercial from the air and pledge to never work with apes again.

Sample Letter to Great Clips:
[email protected], CEO

Dear Ms. Olsen:

I was shocked and disappointed to hear that Great Clips has a commercial that features a young chimpanzee. You should know that chimpanzees used in entertainment are torn away from their mothers as infants, often repeatedly beaten during training, and then discarded when they become too strong to be managed.

Using a chimpanzee for a cheap laugh sends the message that these amazing beings are simply props. Surely you are aware that chimpanzees are endangered species in critical need of protection? You are exploiting chimpanzees for your own profits and this is an unacceptable business practice.

Please make the compassionate decision to remove the chimpanzee from your commercial, and please consider to never exploit great apes for entertainment purposes again. Thank you for your consideration of my comments on this urgent matter.

You may also submit your comments to their Facebook page, or post Tweets that express your concern, such as: @GreatClips I was disappointed to see a chimp in your ad for #clipnotes. Please remove the ad! www.chimpsnw.org

**If you send a letter, please BCC [email protected] for tracking purposes. Thank you!

Take Action Tuesday: Decision in Las Vegas tomorrow

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Recently, Converse shoes had a poster in the UK subways featuring a fear-grimacing chimpanzee. After hearing from concerned advocates, they pulled the ads! And, they agreed to never use primates in promotions again. This great news demonstrates that letter writing really is very powerful, and every letter counts.

Since your letters make a difference for our chimpanzee friends, please take a minute to write a letter to the Clark County commissioners to urge them to deny Mike Casey’s permit application to continue to house his chimps in a residential neighborhood in Las Vegas. If you have already written a letter, please share the alert! You can use the sample letter as an example, or use your own words. Be sure to emphasize that this is not only a public safety concern, but it also the right thing to do. Chimpanzees don’t belong in back yards, at birthday parties, at car dealer openings, or on film sets. Captive chimpanzees suffer in these situations, and they belong in sanctuaries that can meet their needs. They get better when they get to a sanctuary (see Jamie below for proof of that). There is sanctuary space available for these chimps.

Here are just two examples of the way chimpanzees are affected by being in Mike Casey’s life:

  • Travis, born at Mike Casey’s former facility in Missouri and sold as a “pet” to a woman in suburban Connecticut, escaped from his owner, mauled a woman, and died after being stabbed by his owner with a butcher knife and then shot by police.
  • A trainer hit a chimpanzee on the German set of the movie Speed Racer (a production for which Mike Casey’s company was responsible) in front of an “animal welfare” monitor. You can read the full review at AHAfilm.org (and look for ratings and reviews – they don’t make it easy to link to specific reviews!).

The hearing is tomorrow – so don’t wait, write your letter today!

And for a reminder of what sanctuary can do, take Jamie (a former “entertainer”). Here she was in June 2008, shortly after her arrival:

Jamie

And here she is now:

Speak up on behalf of Jamie and all the chimpanzees out there who still need our help.

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

Advocacy Program Logo Design Contest

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CSNW’s advocacy program, Primate Patrol, mainly focuses on raising public awareness about issues that chimpanzees and other primates face in the entertainment industry. We are starting to broaden our efforts and provide tools for people to help apes in need for a wider range of issues. You may have seen our regular advocacy posts called “Take Action Tuesday,” where we have posted information on how to take action for exploited apes. (Most recently we posted about this petition—sign it now if you haven’t already!)

As part of our plans to broaden the program we are looking for a new logo and design. We want to see what talented folks are out there, so we are having a logo design contest, open to anyone! Visit this page to find out contest details. The new program will be called Eyes on Apes. Click on the contest link to read the mission statement and help inspire your creative design! We’re hoping contestants can come up with a tagline, too. If you have art or graphic design skills, feel free to send us your mock ups to [email protected] and please share the contest page with your graphic design friends and family!

Beautiful Jamie

As a prize for the logo we love the most, we are awarding a beautiful 8×10 matted print of Jamie, as well as a $100 gift certificate to the CSNW store. Jamie was exploited by the entertainment industry and pet trade and then used in invasive biomedical testing before being rescued by CSNW just over 4 years ago. She is one of the smartest primates I’ve ever known and it is so sad to think of how miserable she must have been in her previous life. Captivity is never an ideal place for chimpanzees, but we hope through our advocacy efforts that individuals like Jamie will get to a sanctuary, too. So, in recognition of Jamie, the contest will go up until October 31 (her honorary birthday).