Quoted in Journal Sentinel

I recently spoke with a reporter from Wisconsin about a new sanctuary called Primates Incorporated that was developed in order to provide a home for monkeys retired from laboratory research. Although we discussed many facets of primate retirement, I was pleased to be able to describe to her just what makes sanctuary retirement so different from other forms of captive life for nonhuman primates:

She 'got it', of course, and hopefully many other readers did too. There are so many primates leaving laboratory research, and we need all the sanctuary space we can get.

Interviewed on WRIC 8 News

A few months ago, I was contacted by Will Lowery, a Richmond, VA-area lawyer who was investigating claims that Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) had retired research monkeys to a sanctuary. Will was skeptical because the school could provide no details about this placement, which seemed strange. I verified at the time that I (on behalf of the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance) had not spoken with VCU about monkey retirement. Will said he would keep checking around.

Flash foward to the present day, and Will had FOIA'ed a number of documents regarding to monkey retirement by VCU, and found nothing. He contacted me again, and this time I did an in-depth inquiry of US primate sanctuaries. Not only did I find no evidence of VCU retiring monkeys to the nine NAPSA member sanctuaries, but there was no evidence of them retiring monkeys to any accredited primate sanctuaries in the country (and even a few unaccredited facilities.)

I told all this to WRIC Richmond reporter Kerri O'Brien, and the segment aired this week.

The video can be seen here. Unsurprisingly, VCU admitted that they never retired monkeys to sanctuaries. I am grateful to WRIC for revealing the university's shocking lapse in judgement and for helping me spread the message that NAPSA member sanctuaries remain willing to work with laboratories seeking to retire monkeys... with full transparency, of course!

Quoted in The Dodo

This week I was busy working on NAPSA's response to a viral video making the rounds, which originated from a disreputable organization housing exotic wildlife. Many media sources re-posted the video, so I prepared an open letter to those corporations in order to inform them about the harms they were inadvertently supporting via promotion of the video.

When I pitched the story to The Dodo, I was happy to see them jump on the opportunity and the article reported the truth behind the video that was garnering so much attention.

As always, I am grateful that the website serves as a platform to help spread the right messages about misleading online content.

 The best part of this article, in my opinion, is that they printed my comment that "It's never too late for a chimpanzee to be placed in a sanctuary." This is a hot topic of late, in regards to the NIH's retirement of federally-owned and -supported chimpanzees to sanctuary. And of course - it's the truth! There are over 340 chimpanzees at NAPSA member sanctuaries who are proof of this.