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The Mona Foundation was set up to end the exploitation of primates in captivity. The foundation has established a sanctuary near Girona in Spain, which provides a home where rescued chimpanzees and other primates can live in a natural environment and where people can be inspired to understand and respect wild animals.

• Why a chimp sanctuary in Spain?

• The origins of the Mona Foundation

• Who supports the Mona Foundation?

• Activities and achievements

• How we care for primates at the Mona Foundation

Volunteering

The Mona Foundation depends heavily on volunteer helpers to continue its work. Volunteers are responsible for many of the tasks involved in the day-to-day care of chimpanzees at our sanctuary. They usually stay for a period of six months and live at the centre. Other helpers who live locally give a day or more of their time each week to undertake tasks such as publicity, school visits, fundraising and maintenance.

Long-term volunteers

Primate Research

As the day-to-day work of caring for Mona’s primates continues, a group of scientists and students are making time to study their every movement. Mona’s Investigation Department consists of a team of vets, biologists, anthropologists, and archaeologists who are trying to understand as much as possible about how the primates adapt to life at the rescue centre.

One of the most important aspects of their work is to evaluate the potential for rehabilitation and re-socialisation of each primate that arrives at Mona. As Olga Feliu explains, “all the animals we rescue have suffered some form of deprivation before they got here. Toto, a 46 year-old male, had spent the past three years alone in Frankfurt zoo and had become depressed and lifeless.

Close to the city of Girona, a group of chimpanzees is living in a newly established sanctuary, which aims to recreate their natural environment in Africa.

This is the home of the Mona Foundation (the Monkey Foundation), a local organisation set up to rescue chimpanzees and other primates from poor conditions in captivity.

Visitors to the Mona sanctuary can watch families of chimps exploring the towers, ropeways and natural landscape of their spacious new home.  Mona Foundation volunteers are always on hand to explain the story of the rescue of the chimps and answer questions about the protection of primates in the wild.