Web Posted: 12/09/2006 01:00 PM CST
Stephen Rene Tello
Special to the Express-News, San Antonio TX
For 28 years, Primarily Primates has been the last resort for animals discarded by entertainers, zoos and labs. We who have dedicated years to this mission merit the support of San Antonio.
Several weeks ago, a Travis County probate judge and the state's attorney general, acting in response to legal attacks by the Virginia-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, placed Primarily Primates under temporary receivership.
The receiver immediately gave PETA affiliates full run of the refuge. Since then, one chimpanzee suffered a severe facial injury, two monkeys have died, and a third became ill. Still another has been stolen.
Many animals have been taken away. Seven chimpanzees have been carted off to the zoolike Chimp Haven, which is tied, by law and financing, to biomedical testing.
Our Web site was turned into a frenzy of allegations, adorned with distorted photographs taken by people promoting a series of lawsuits obviously meant to ruin us.
This, although the role of a receivership is to help a charity survive.
Before the receivership, Primarily Primates was ahead of the previous year's income by more than $200,000. But PETA's lawsuit and the receivership prevented the normal year-end donor mailings and stopped two major grants.
Contrary to what the receiver has reported and this newspaper repeated, we never housed 1,000 animals. We housed 374 primates and about 200 other animals. Most of those recently removed had enjoyed 75 acres and a pond.
The only primates for whom space was a concern were new arrivals from Ohio State University. Our construction for their enclosures — eight times the size they had in the Ohio lab — was interrupted by this very case.
Allegations that primates lacked medical care are wrong. Few sanctuaries have on-site veterinary clinics. But seven veterinarians were on call to Primarily Primates, and a primate specialist visited nearly every week.
Reports of primate deaths have been both miscounted and incorrectly reported. Two chimpanzees who arrived from Ohio died from documented pre-existing conditions. (Two others had died earlier, in the Ohio lab itself.) And we delayed socialization for one chimpanzee. Back in Ohio, this chimpanzee attacked another, who died.
Contrary to previous reporting, Primarily Primates does not accept animals with contagious diseases. Texas environmental officials visited and, after making a few changes, found our method of waste disposal complied with state and local regulations.
We haven't been able to take in all animals, but once in our refuge, animals have been safe from being used further or killed — the very point of a sanctuary. Yet one of the first official acts of the temporary receiver was to petition for permission to start killing.
The advocacy group Friends of Animals stepped in to enable us to legally defend our sanctuary. Since then, its president and I have faced contempt-of-court proceedings regarding a particular mailing, and while we'll abide by the orders of the court, we note that these proceedings were carried out simply because we did what, under normal circumstances, would be our proper work — asking Primarily Primates' traditional donors to help us survive as a true sanctuary.
But when an operation like PETA rolls into town with its well-funded PR machine, it's hard to fight back. They've long prided themselves in getting the upper hand in the media world, and it's no surprise they've got it now. This means several major projects, designed to augment the naturalistic enclosures that our nonhuman residents already enjoy, are now delayed and possibly stopped forever.
There were other desperate animals awaiting rescue; the fates of most will never be reported in these pages.
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Stephen Rene Tello is former executive director of Primarily Primates.
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Online at: San Antonio Express-News
