Please Help Save Guyana's Monkeys

February 2006

The International Primate Protection League (IPPL), which works worldwide for the conservation and protection of apes and monkeys, has called on Guyana to ban all export of monkeys.

IPPL has recently learned that a shipment of 500 monkeys may be leaving Guyana for Miami International Airport, USA.

Guyana is notorious for exporting squirrel and capuchin monkeys, most of which are used in fatal experimentation in research laboratories, including secretive US military laboratories which use monkeys in cruel bio-warfare experimentation.

On Friday 27 January IPPL was alerted to the pending export of a large number of primates from Guyana. According to our contact,

"I work at MIA and am hearing talk about 500 monkeys being shipped from Guyana to MIA next week…I find this very disturbing."

IPPL has verified that indeed a large shipment of Guyanan wildlife is expected to reach Miami in the immediate future, including many monkeys. It is not clear if some or all of the wild creatures will be kept in the United States, or whether they will be re-exported through Miami to another country.

Because the US bans the pet trade in imported monkeys, most of the unfortunate monkeys imported to the United States end up in painful experimentation. Users of monkeys in bio-warfare experiments are apparently killing off monkeys so fast that they want more and more monkeys to replace them.

One laboratory that uses imported squirrel monkeys in painful experiments is the Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, USA, a secretive facility that studies viral diseases in monkeys. In 2004 13 monkeys died overnight when a heating malfunction sent the temperature soaring over 100 degrees fahrenheit (38 celsius).

A scientist who observed Guyana’s monkey trade at close quarters in the 1990s was appalled at the cruelty of the trade. He reported, "Their mammal, bird, and reptile collection methods were remarkably simple but devastating in NW and NE Guyana. For example, wildlife trappers completely decimated ALL squirrel monkeys along a 75 km stretch of the Berbice River in NE Guyana. I estimate that 1200 animals were lost in only two weeks of trapping! Housing conditions for the trapped monkeys were inhumane and frankly made me quite ill to observe. The treatment of the infant squirrel monkeys led to what I'm sure was at least 90% mortality. My sense of the situation was that squirrel monkeys were disappearing out of the forests as fast as they could be trapped."

WHAT YOU CAN DO Please write letters to the President of Guyana, other officials named, and the Ambassador of Guyana in your country of residence. Airmail postage from the United States to Guyana is now 84 cents and letters within the United States cost 39 cents to mail. Addresses President Bharrat Jagdeo Office of the President New Garden Street Georgetown. Guyana Tel: (592) 225-1330-8 or (592)- 226-7811 Fax: 592-226-3395 His Excellency Bayney Karran Ambassador of Guyana to the United States 2490 Tracy Place NW Washington, DC 20008, USA Tel: 202-265-6900 The Director Guyana Ministry of Tourism, Industry & Commerce 229 South Road Lacytown Georgetown . Guyana Tel: (592) 226 2505 Fax: (592) 225 9898 His Excellency the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 254 South Road & New Garden Street Georgetown, Guyana South America Tel : (592)226-1607 Fax: (592) 225-9192 Email: minfor@guyana.net.gy