Help us end the suffering of thousands of primates in the UK by ensuring that the UK primate pet trade is made illegal. Below are a few simple things that you can do to support our campaign. You can find out more about the primate pet trade in our campaigns section on our charity’s website (Wild Futures).
There are approximately 5,000 or more primates kept by private individuals in the UK today. Primates are intelligent, socially complex wild animals that suffer greatly in captivity, but they are currently afforded very little protection under UK law. What protection does exist is often flouted or ignored – which presents a significant risk to human health as well as compromising the welfare of individual primates.
82% of all rescued primates residing at the Monkey Sanctuary were either improperly licensed or not licensed at all before arrival at the Sanctuary. All primates are listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) due to the threat posed by international trade to their continued existence in the wild.
Conservationists working in primate habitat countries agree that the existence of a legal trade in primates in places like the UK and the USA has a negative impact on wild populations of primates, both directly (through capture for sale as pets to people from these countries) and indirectly (through example). Nevertheless, Critically Endangered species such as cotton-top tamarins continue to be traded as pets without regulation here in the UK.