Dear Friends,

We hope your family and friends have all stayed safe and healthy during this difficult year. We are grateful for your commitment to the animals at Primarily Primates in these challenging times and we’re relying on your generosity and kindness more than ever.

PPI’s work is always essential because there are always animals in need.

For instance, in September PPI welcomed 11 new residents following their heroic rescue from Indiana’s Wildlife in Need, a roadside zoo owned by a trading partner of Joe Exotic from “Tiger King.” He had lost his license to operate in August.

The new residents include a female olive baboon, three patas monkeys, two brown lemurs, a bonnet macaque, a rhesus macaque and three booted macaques. They are in the process of adjusting to their new environment.

This year we also began working on removing the old, no longer in-use orangutan and marmoset habitats that were in the middle of the sanctuary in preparation to build the latest chimpanzee “green space.” This space will be shared among different troops of chimpanzees. We are still fundraising to begin the second phase—the actual construction of the state-of-the-art habitat—which we hope to finish in 2021.

The space will offer our chimps expanded opportunities for enrichment, exercise, socialization and play. The completion of this project means all of our chimpanzees will have 24-hour access to outdoor grass-bottomed playground areas.

We’ve had some successful introductions during the pandemic, too: Baxter and Jason, both chimpanzees, are in the process of being introduced, and enjoyed an exciting habitat renovation in the process; there’s now a 16-foot climbing structure and a treehouse.

Missy, a weeper capuchin who was kept as a pet before arriving at Primarily Primates, now has her first companionship with another capuchin (she had been raised with a spider monkey); Luz, a white-fronted capuchin, and Missy are inseparable, and love to intimidate other primates many times their size in neighboring habitats.

Long-tailed macaque, Milano, went from a former research subject who was very lonely, to a very happy monkey when he was recently introduced to long-tailed macaque, Hillary, who was also used for biomedical research prior to her arrival to PPI. The two are always cooing at one another and grooming.

In 2021, we will continue to give all our chimpanzees, lemurs, gibbons, spider monkeys, capuchins, macaques and macaws a second chance at life and to be there for other primates who need to be rescued. And we will continue to care for the many other animals at our sanctuary such as our wild horses and more than 70 birds.

As 2020 comes to an end please consider making a tax-deductible gift by choosing one of the options below:

Make a general donation
Make a donation via PayPal

Your gift will allow all our animals to thrive and experience joy and companionship—the same things you and I depend on.

Despite the uncertainty ahead, rest assured that your donation directly helps animals.

Happy New Year!

With gratitude,

Brooke Chavez

Executive Director

Primarily Primates