Urgent Action Needed TODAY to Help Animals at PPI

Update!
The court-appointed “receivership” was dissolved, which means that the person responsible for improving conditions up to this point has been ordered to wrap up her affairs and vacate the property by May 1. Unfortunately, the parties’ agreement does not include a plan for the transition of animal care needed for the hundreds of animals still confined at PPI who now face an uncertain future.

While it is a truly tragic day for the animals there, this story is not over. Animal advocates including Dr. Jane Goodall and a number of national groups have spoken out in the animals’ behalf, demonstrating their support for the receiver’s heroic efforts and support for increased oversight and quality animal care at the facility.

Please contact the officials listed below and urge them to reconsider and reverse their decision.

On the heels of a lawsuit fueled by PETA, the Texas attorney general filed its own lawsuit against PPI and the court appointed a well-known specialist with more than 20 years of primate and rehabilitation experience to bring the place up to some level of decency. We are appalled and saddened to announce that the Texas attorney general has entered into a settlement agreement whereby all charges against PPI are to be dismissed; he will wash his hands of the obligation to care for the animals and will turn the pseudo-sanctuary over to a board of directors that includes Friends of Animals president Priscilla Feral, a supporter of Wally Swett, who has, while drunk, threatened volunteers with a firearm and, in the past, failed to provide even emergency veterinary care for dying animals. Animals under Swett’s “care” were allowed to freeze to death in unheated enclosures. The court-appointed receiver, Lee Theisen-Watt; her attorney, Skip Trimble; and longtime PPI staff members are all expressing their outrage. To make a bad situation worse, the attorney general is pledging to use his offices to attempt to remove the seven surviving former OSU chimpanzees from their new home at Chimp Haven in Louisiana and return them to PPI, a move that will be hard fought. In addition to being traumatic and perhaps even deadly for the chimpanzees, their return would violate a Texas state and local law prohibiting dangerous animals at a site like PPI.

Please, right now, take just a few moments of your time to contact these authorities to let them know that you oppose this settlement and are concerned about the well-being and safety of the animals at PPI if the old “regime” is returned to power:

The Honorable Greg Abbott
Texas Attorney General
512-475-4665
512-322-0578 (fax)
The Honorable Rick Perry
Governor of Texas
www.governor.state.tx.us/contact
1-800-252-9600 (citizen's opinion hotline)
512-463-2000 (main switchboard)
512-463-1849 (fax)

Read more about the struggle to get PPI back on its feet and to provide care for the animals there.

PETA President Ingrid Newkirk Issues Statement on Settlement

PETA is pleased to have helped gather and organize evidence that lead to a search and seizure warrant served at PPI in October 2006. Although it was too late to save animals who had died of outright neglect, some lingering in pain for long periods of time, as a result of that entry into what had been closed premises, relief was delivered to hundreds of chimpanzees and other animals who had been severely neglected. Since then, animals have received veterinary care, proper food, clean water, and the comfort of bedding and nesting boxes that were all denied to them under Wally Swett and Stephen Tellos with the protection of Friends of Animals. The Texas attorney general has now settled the case, much to the distress of those who have come to know and love the animals they have cared for during this interim period and to the concern of all those who know what Friends of Animals sanctioned and how it stood by and took no action to save animals from suffering. Nevertheless, we live in hope that lessons have been learned and that the facility will no longer be mismanaged and no longer serve as the place of despair for animals that it once was.

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