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	<title>IPPL</title>
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		<title>Guest post by a “half woman, half gibbon” from Oz</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My name is Sophie Miller, and I am a zookeeper from Australia—also known as “Oz”!   I work mainly with a variety of primates, but gibbons have a special place in my heart. I have a bumper sticker that reads “half woman, half gibbon,” and it definitely suits me! My fellow Australian primate keepers (Belinda Burns and Kelly Lambe) and I enjoyed a wonderful 10 days at IPPL’s headquarters gibbon sanctuary in South Carolina in October. After five long flights and around 30 hours of travelling I arrived on site and rested my very jet-lagged body. I was awakened the next morning to the amazing sounds of 33 gibbons calling at once. What a greeting! I was welcomed first by the “office manager,” Palu-Palu, who did his “cabbage patch” dance for me, and then by handsome Gibby, who stuck his head out of his run to suss out the new person and make sure I was OK. I work with fewer than 10 gibbons, so seeing 33 gibbons in one place was an amazing sight. Igor is my “adopted” gibbon son, so I was keen to meet him first up. I was amazed how good he looked and acted for [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.ippl.org/gibbon/guest-blog-by-a-half-woman-half-gibbon-from-oz/</link>
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		<title>A field report from South Africa’s baboon sanctuary</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Hello from C.A.R.E.! This is day two, and I’m starting to get acclimated. The first day was spent meeting the baboons and catching up with C.A.R.E. founder Rita Miljo, who sends her best to IPPL and its supporters. We are staying at the wonderful Mfubu lodge in a cottage overlooking the Olifants River. No alarm clock was needed, as we were aroused from sleep at 5:00 a.m. by hippos, baboons, and various other bush animals starting their day. Most notable was the sound of a vervet monkey taking the opportunity to relieve herself outside our open window. We thought it was raining ;-). There are some exciting happenings here at C.A.R.E. Workers are busy putting the finishing touches on the new Hok that will house 10 baboons being released from laboratory research. This is remarkable, as (historically speaking) these labs would never think to release their subjects to a sanctuary. That this is occurring is an indication of a change in attitude about baboons, which is cause for celebration.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.ippl.org/gibbon/a-field-report-from-south-africas-baboon-sanctuary/</link>
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		<title>Zanesville deaths highlight the tragedy of exotic animal ownership</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Last weekend, I found myself in the midst of a “teachable moment” with one of my hair stylists, as we discussed the horrible shooting deaths that occurred in Zanesville, Ohio, just one week ago. All last week, it seemed like the whole nation was talking about the tragic killing by local law enforcement of nearly 50 wild animals, including 17 lions and 18 Bengal tigers, that had been released from their cages in a private menagerie. The subsequent suicide of their owner (Terry Thompson, a troubled veteran who had been the target of multiple complaints of animal cruelty, who recently finished serving a one-year prison sentence for illegal firearms charges, and who was struggling with debt) received rather less public sympathy, in comparison to the fate of his “pets.” The whole mess was yet another example of exotic animal ownership run amok. And again, like in the notable case of Travis the rampaging chimpanzee, the result for the animals was death. Although it seems that most of Thompson’s monkeys were spared that fate (one has gone missing and may well have been eaten, but the others were either in cages inside his home or were successfully darted), the fact that [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.ippl.org/gibbon/zanesville-deaths-highlight-the-tragedy-of-exotic-animal-ownership/</link>
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		<title>U.S. 2010 primate imports decrease slightly over 2009 figures</title>
		<description><![CDATA[According to data IPPL has received from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the U.S. imported 21,315 monkeys and apes last year. That is 783 fewer than in 2009. This sounds like good news, but the data do not indicate some important information, such as: how many monkeys were dead on arrival, where the imported monkeys ended up, or what percentage of shipments was inspected by USFWS inspectors. The Centers for Disease Control inspects arriving shipments and tracks them at the quarantine stations, but this agency is extremely secretive. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests are delayed, and, if one gets documents, they are mainly blacked out to protect the dealers’ “privacy.” The CDC itself uses monkeys in research, so it has no interest in the public learning of the horrible experiments in which monkeys are used. Again, as in previous years, we see China as the main source of imported primates to the U.S. (62 percent of all U.S. primate imports). Of the 13,216 monkeys imported from China,  11,478 (86.8 %) were crab-eating macaques, a species not native to that country. The other Chinese imports consisted of 1,738 (native) rhesus macaque monkeys. All data here is unedited material from the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.ippl.org/gibbon/u-s-2010-primate-imports-increase-slightly/</link>
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		<title>Cheers to our &#8220;Day of Caring&#8221; volunteers!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160; Today was Trident United Way’s annual Day of Caring. It was also our seventh year participating in this wonderful community-wide volunteer blitz. (And this time we even made the news!) Each year around the time of the 9/11 attacks, our tri-county area has marked the anniversary with a massive, coordinated volunteer drive. This year, many local businesses gave their employees—over 7,500 of them—the day off work to help schools and charities complete over 400 projects. We love the opportunity to do some major end-of-season clean-up around the property (mowing, weed-eating, raking, etc.). Fall is also the ideal time of year for planting in our warm and humid climate, so we always try to get our Day of Caring volunteers to put some plants in the ground for us. (This year we’re going to try persimmons and blackberries.) And we’re grateful for the help in taking care of back-burner issues that we seem to have a hard time getting around to—like archiving our special VHS tapes to DVDs or finally scraping that annoying black residue left over from some old vinyl floorcoverings off of our office’s hardwood floors. We’re thankful for the teams from the University School of the Lowcountry [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.ippl.org/gibbon/cheers-to-our-day-of-caring-volunteers/</link>
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		<title>IPPL remembers the “Pitch in for Pitchou” campaign for an orphaned gorilla in Cameroon</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In 1998, IPPL raised over $35,000 from our supporters to help a unique baby gorilla girl named Pitchou, whose mother had been shot for bushmeat. Pitchou had languished for three days in a small crate in a tourist area hotel before being bought by the hotel’s owners, who could no longer bear to see her suffer. They paid about US$20 for her. A couple of weeks later, the owners realized what a commitment it is to care for a gorilla and turned her over to the hardworking folks at Cameroon’s Limbe Wildlife Centre (LWC). When she arrived at the LWC, Pitchou had severe ringworm, her body covered with scabs, scars, and bald patches from the infection. She was malnourished and so traumatized that (just like some stressed-out humans) she perpetually ground her teeth. She was a real mess! At that time, IPPL had already helped support this rescue center for a couple of years and immediately began raising more funds, with our “Pitch in for Pitchou” campaign, to help sustain the work of facility and enable it to meet Pitchou’s needs. Thankfully, with the help of professional expertise and 24-hour care, Pitchou made a full recovery. Now, 13 years later, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.ippl.org/gibbon/pitch-in-for-pitchou-campaign/</link>
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		<title>Escape from a cancer lab: Arun Rangsi’s story</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Maybe you’ve seen those heartbreaking photos of tiny monkey babies being raised in a lab, clinging desperately to a wire “mother.” Such cruel old experiments confirmed that all primates—human and nonhuman alike—need love and affection to grow up normally. Sadly, that was how our own Arun Rangsi spent his early life. Born in a cancer lab in California in 1979, this little gibbon was rejected by his mother within a week. He was placed on a wire surrogate mom and tattooed with “HLA-98” in blue on his chest. He suffered repeated bouts of illness for almost two years. Then, as luck would have it, the cancer lab lost its funding and the lab director was reduced to cleaning his own gibbon cages. Arun Rangsi, underweight and sickly, was threatened with euthanasia. That’s when we got a call from a concerned lab employee—and stepped in to rescue this poor little fellow. We had him flown from California to our sanctuary in the lush Lowcountry of South Carolina, which IPPL established in 1977. We gave him his Thai Buddhist name, which means “The Rising Sun of Dawn.” He arrived at IPPL on his second birthday&#8211;August 9, 1981&#8211;exactly 30 years ago today! With [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.ippl.org/gibbon/escape-from-a-cancer-lab-arun-rangsi/</link>
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