Member Profile: Rebecca Austin

An IPPL Volunteer "Cat Person" Becomes a "Primate Person"
May 2005

While growing up among the widely-spaced homes of her extended family's neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina, IPPL volunteer Rebecca Austin (left of Shirley in the photo) specialized in cats. She spent the majority of her free time taming the semi-wild felines that made their home in the crawl space beneath her grandparents' house next door. Thanks to persistence and patience, she tamed every single one of them-at one point she was taking care of 18 cats-and probably 100 kitties by now are resting in peace in her parents' spacious back yard.

Rebecca has always loved animals, but a degree in chemistry from the University of North Caroima, Wilmington, let her to a career in industry. She has been involved in sales and technical service for paper colorants and process chemicals and, since 2002, for corants in the food and beverage industry. She is now an Account Manager for Sensient Technologies, which formulates the cheerful colors that coat those little M&M candies, and (it's true) she gets showered with yummy snack foods of every description wherever she goes. Her work involves a lot of travel throughout the United States, which she enjoys-but it does not leave her with much leisure time. When she does have a weekend to spare, she likes to volunteer.

Rebecca still lives in Charlotte (now a thriving city of over a half a million residents that has become known as a center of the banking industry), but she regularly makes the three-hour ddrive south to IPPL's sanctuary headquarters. About five years ago, she remembers, she decided she wanted to become "serious about getting involved with animals conservation - especially primates." She started to surf the Internet for organization and was excited to find IPPL relatively close to home. She joined, attended her first biennial Members' Meeting at IPPL's headquarters in 2002, and quickly discovered she had found a cause she could commit to.

Ever since, she has mad the trip to IPPL as often as her schedule permits, these days about one weekend a month. When she first started visiting regularly, IPPL's little hand-raised gibbon Courtney (who was attacked by her own mother less that two weeks old) was just an infant and needed extra care. Rebecca quickly became one of Courtney's "Aunties" and, whenever she comes to visit, still loves to play with the lively little ape. Rebecca also has developed special friendships with gibbons Tong, Igor, and Baby-she would rather be outside with the animals, even if that means cleaning their living areas. She also enjoys being a tour guide and has helped show visitors around the sanctuary. And she has fallen in love-with our blind canine mascot, Bullet, so Rebecca has become a dog lover as well as a "primate person."

"The goal of IPPL is so pure-conservation and protection for all primates worldwide," she notes. She is also glad that IPPL's mission includes assisting overseas projects, which are "often overlooked by larger groups-but are doing all of the necessary grassroots work in the actual countries where the protection is needed!" If more is not done for primates in their own native countries, she fears, industrialization and human greed will continue to destroy the last remaining habitats-pushing primates to the brink of extinction."

Rebecca still has cats-five of them now, all rescues-but her favorite is Mini-Me, a one-year-old cross-eyed black Siamese with a large overbite and adorable personality. Fortunately, her cats have agreed to let her keep visiting the gibbons at IPPL!