Quoted in People Magazine

 The Chimpanzees In Need emergency rescue effort I am leading celebrated another major victory recently, as we safely relocated eight of the chimps to their new sanctuary home in Florida. The day was wonderful for so many reasons, and it's been thrilling to see the media coverage of this collaborative project.

One of the most notable was People Magazine, whose article included this comment from me:

I'm so grateful to have eight more chimps rescued! In total, twenty three have now been brought to safety thanks to Chimpanzees In Need, and eighteen await. We hope to rescue them all in 2022!

Click here to read the full article - the story was also shared in LA Daily News, Vegan Magazine, and various local Florida publications.

Rest in peace, Shirley McGreal

Shirley McGreal, founder of International Primate Protection League, passed away after a long life spent protecting wildlife and encouraging others to do the same.

I am so saddened to hear of her passing. She was an indomitable inspiration to many and a huge force against primate exploitation in many countries - someone who really helped shape a better future for captive and wild animals. Read more about her here.

I last saw her in 2019, when I visited IPPL for a few days and interviewed her for The Founders, a book on sanctuary founders I was writing. The book is not yet published, but her chapter has been written for a while now. It concludes:

"The sanctuary is where she’s made her peace in a world that churns with so much torment. She is 'completing her life,' she admits, and when her time on earth is over, she wants to be cremated and have her ashes scattered in the gibbon graveyard in the middle of the sanctuary. There she will finally rest, overseen by the garden statues sent from all over the world, amongst the exotic apes she helped bring home as their overlapping whoops layer through the air in a blessing."

Interviewed in Mongabay article

 Mongabay recently explored the otherwise-untapped market of GIFs relying on primate exploitation. When they initially approached me for an interview, I was intrigued because somehow the issue had never been brought to my attention - though for sure it's very obvious that there are many online GIFs showing primates in harmful ways (wearing clothes, performing, "acting" like humans, etc.)

I spoke with them to explain why the use of primates is so harmful, and the many ways it has negative repurcussions in the lives of the individual animal depicted but also others of the species.

Read the whole article here.