Protect Night Monkeys from Being Captured for Labs

FROM International Primate Protection League (IPPL)

Please write to the ambassadors of Colombia, Peru, and Brazil. Ask them to put pressure on local authorities to investigate the massive cross-border trade in night monkeys and protect their country's night monkeys.

CONTACT

E-mail the Ambassador of Peru to the U.S.
Find other Peruvian embassies here

E-mail the Ambassador of Brazil to the U.S.:
Find other Brazilian embassies here

INFORMATION / TALKING POINTS

The night monkeys of the Amazon are under a unique threat.

Years ago, these little nocturnal primates caught the attention of Dr. Manuel Elkin Patarroyo. Night monkeys supposedly respond to the malaria bug similarly to the way humans do, so Dr. Patarroyo decided to use these gentle creatures in his infectious disease lab, in the jungles of Colombia.

According to the LA Times, the lab rounds up at least 1,600 wild night monkeys a year for Dr. Patarroyo’s studies.

Not only that, when Dr. Patarroyo is finished with his experiments, many of the sick, weak ex-lab monkeys are allegedly tossed right back into the jungle. According to the Colombian government agency Corpoamazonia, there is no rehabilitation plan for these poor creatures. And still, the desperately needed cure for malaria seems as distant as ever.

Angela Maldonado is our contact at the hardworking Colombian nonprofit Fundación Entropika; she knows that lab officials in Colombia have persuaded the poor native people of Peru and Brazil, just across the Amazon River from Dr. Patarroyo’s facility, to capture night monkeys for the lab and illegally transport them across the unguarded border.

Angela is trying to persuade national authorities to take a more active role in protecting their countries’ native monkeys—no small task, since Dr. Patarroyo is, she says, a friend of the former Colombian President.

Thank you for everything you do for animals!