Urgent: let’s act together to stop monkeys being sent to the United States

Photo: Cruelty Free International (previously BUAV) investigation, Cambodia, 2008

We suspect that hundreds of individuals, imprisoned in the aircraft hold, will arrive in the United States this week. Join us, international animal defence groups Action for Primates (UK), One Voice (France), PeTA (USA), and Stop Camarles (Spain), to ask Martha Williams, Director of USFWS, for an immediate embargo on the importation of long-tailed macaques into America.

Since 1996, we have been relentlessly campaigning against the worldwide trade of long-tailed macaques for the research industry and toxicity testing (poisoning). The pillaging of wild populations, keeping them captive and transporting them like freight by aircraft, breeding in captivity, as well as the inhumanity and suffering involved in the final fate that awaits the monkeys are all of the points that One Voice and its partners condemn year after year.

No reported action has yet been taken by Cambodian authorities, despite their own national wildlife officials being arrested and charged. Not only has recent information in the media, according to which exporting had been suspended, not been confirmed, but the anticipated shipment this week clearly shows that that is not the case. We must continue to protest for monkeys.

Below is an email template that you can adapt as you see fit and send to Martha Williams, Director of USFWS, managementauthority@fws.gov or via the form on the www.fws.gov site.

Dear Managing Director/Ms Williams,

I approve of the recent indictments filed by the US Department of Justice regarding serious allegations of illegal trafficking of wild long-tailed macaques from Cambodia to American laboratories. However, I am afraid that, following these serious accusations involving a wild endangered species, no embargo has been imposed on the importation of long-tailed macaques into the United States.

I am startled to learn that a shipment of macaques from Cambodia will likely arrive in the United States during the coming week. Alongside the Action for Primates (UK), One Voice (France), PeTA (US), and Stop Camarles (Spain) associations, I am urging USFWS to impose an immediate embargo on the importation of long-tailed macaques.

Yours sincerely,

Translated from the French by Joely Justice