By Madeline Krasno | Project Leader
The first group of vervet monkeys are acclimating nicely to their new home, and the wonderful Spring weather has brought them out of their night house and into the trees. Vervets are semi-arboreal monkeys so they are often spotted in the trees of their new enclosure when they are not foraging for food on the ground.
We have some exciting news to share with you about the inhabitants of this enclosure. Two individuals, Sheva and Shani the patas monkeys, have joined this group of vervet monkeys. The two species would naturally occupy the same habitat in the wild, just different areas of the habitat, so we decided to carefully introduce the two groups. Unlike vervets, who are semi-arboreal, patas are ground-dwelling monkeys. Pictured above you will see the vervet monkeys in the trees, and pictured below you will see the patas leaving their night house for the first time to explore their new, spacious enclosure. We are thrilled to have additional monkeys enjoying the benefits of this wonderful enclosure.
Our staff, along with volunteers from Masa Israel, have been hard at work laying the foundation for the additional enclosures that will house three more groups of vervet monkeys. As mentioned before, all of these vervet monkeys were rescued from the exotic pet trade, research laboratories, and petting zoos. In addition, we have the group that was rehomed from the Gaza zoo late last year. Our staff and volunteers worked together to lift and secure these large poles (pictured below), which will act as the foundation for the remaining vervet enclosures.
We are overwhelmingly grateful for these three men who spent the day assisting our staff with this project. Their strength, patience, and enthusiasm enabled us to complete in only a couple of hours a project that would have taken our staff alone several days. We are now well on our way to completing the additional three enclosures and to moving three more groups of monkeys from rehabilitation into permanent, state-of-art habitats!
We have one final update to share with you: the Israeli Primate Sanctuary Foundation Facebook page has officially been launched! If you are on Facebook, be sure to check out the amazing photos of the numerous species living at IPSF, read about their rescue stories, and learn about what is happening in the primate world. We will begin posting our GlobalGiving Updates for this project there as well.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
