HSI Sends Funds to Sierra Leone Animal Groups Affected by Ebola Outbreak
Street Dog Program, Chimp Sanctuary to receive $6,000 each
(Oct. 21, 2014)—Two animal welfare organizations in Sierra Leone in West Africa are receiving emergency grants to support their work that has been impacted by the Ebola outbreak. Humane Society International is making the grants of U.S. $6,000 each.
Andrew Rowan, president of HSI, said: “We want to assist our courageous partners in animal protection in their hour of acute need. The efforts of NGOs in West Africa have been severely hampered by the Ebola outbreak, and we hope these funds help these two organizations carry out their critical missions.”
One grant will go to the Campaign Against Cruelty to Animals to help bring relief to pets, street dogs and farm animals in need in the stricken West African nation. The organization, with its partner, the Sierra Leone Animal Welfare Society, is helping to provide food for animals in quarantined homes and villages in the southern part of the country.
Another grant will provide funds to supplement lost operating revenues at the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, near Freetown, that provides safe haven for 87 orphaned, abandoned and confiscated chimpanzees and works to enforce the nation’s wildlife laws.
Authorities have restricted vehicle traffic in the vicinity of the sanctuary, making it much more difficult for Tacugama’s supply team to procure needed food and supplies for the care of the chimpanzees and for normal operations. The Ebola crisis has also brought to a halt the flow of volunteers and visitors to the sanctuary and its eco-lodges, eliminating a crucial source of operating revenues.
Bernard Unti, Ph.D., HSI senior policy adviser, said: “Tacugama’s record in chimpanzee conservation and care is outstanding. Its work is too important, its staff is too devoted and its chimpanzees are in too great a need for the world to stand by and watch.”
Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, founded by Bala Amarasekaran in 1995, is a member of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance, whose several dozen organizations work to combat the hunting of primates for bushmeat and the illegal pet and commercial trade, and to halt the widespread habitat destruction that threatens Africa’s primates with extinction.
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