Stumptails leaving for Texas sanctuary Aug. 24

With new living quarters completed, the colony of stumptailed monkeys owned by the UW–Madison Primate Center is headed Aug. 24 for San Antonio’s Wild Animal Orphanage.

Joseph Kemnitz, interim director of the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center, said the orphanage will take responsibility for the colony after the transfer takes place. Primate Center monkeys had been a fixture at Madison’s Henry Vilas Zoo since 1963, but a federal funding restriction last winter required the university to find the colonies a new home.

Kemnitz said the university is providing $40,000 to the orphanage for the new enclosure, and will also pay for transportation costs and donate other materials from the old facility.

The Wild Animal Orphanage has a record of responsible care for the animals they adopt, he added, which currently includes more than 200 animals, ranging from primates and wolves to reptiles.

“We’re quite happy with the arrangement,” he said. “The orphanage has been around for about 15 years, and they have been developing a good financial base through fundraising and donations. They appear to have a very solid future ahead of them.”

The transfer was originally planned for June, but Kemnitz said a prolonged heatwave in Texas this summer stalled efforts to complete the new facility for the colony. Stumptails, a threatened species native to Thailand, live in tropical climates and adapt well to warmer temperatures like those in Texas, Kemnitz said.

The orphanage built two adjoining compartments with more than 50,000 cubic feet of space, which encloses a number of existing trees and vegetation. They will also install a large swimming pool within the housing.

The UW–Madison colony now numbers 55 – an infant stumptail was born within the last month, Kemnitz said.

The Primate Center’s agreement with the orphanage in April gave UW–Madison a secure long-term option for the stumptails. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which had financially supported the primate house at Vilas Zoo since 1963, ended funding for the facility on Feb 1, 1998. In March, UW–Madison transferred the rhesus monkeys housed at Vilas to the Tulane Regional Primate Research Center in Covington, La.