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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 primates at our sanctuary. We ask for a mínimum commitment of six months and in exchange for  your time and dedication, we offer volunteers a truly unique opportunity and training as a captive primate carer. Our sanctuary is one of few, if not the only one, to offer volunteers with no prior experience in this field, such an opportunity.  Thanks to this, our volunteers are well equipped with basic and practical primate husbandry knowledge.

So get involved and help us care for our primates.  For information on volunteer requirements and specific conditions at our sanctuary, consult the following web page:

http://www.mona-uk.org/sanctuary-news/79-volunteer-work-at-the-mona-chimpanzee-sanctuary

Many thanks!!!

In May, MONA was invited to participate in Biodiversity Week promoted by the United Nations within the framework of the international year of Biodiversity.

Many different organizations from all over the region organized events concerning conservation of diverse species and their respective ecosystems.

The Mona Foundation organized eight different activities, four targeted at families with children and four others for adults.  Every day there was a very enthusiastic crowd.

You can learn more about the activities held during this event by going to the following websites: www.setmanabiodiversitat.cat and www.cbd.int/2010

In addition to the many modifications at the sanctuary including the construction of a new observation tower (funded thanks to Lusophone University in Portugal), we have built a new, temporary holding enclosure for smaller primates this past year.

The function of this new installation is to temporally hold primates that need to be urgently rescued and for many different reasons (incompatibility with pre-existing groups or the fact that they are different species) cannot be permanently kept at MONA.

The first primate to benefit from this newly constructed environment was Chafi, a six-year old female macaque who was illegally brought into Spain from Morrocco when she was just an infant.  She was quite overweight and had many abnormal behaviour patterns among which the saddest was self mutilation of her extremities.  When she was found, she was living in someone´s house near Barcelona where she lived penned up for many years in what was originally a barbecue area with mesh fencing used to improvise a cage.

Although Chafi had been accepted to go to a zoological park near Bilbao where many other macaques had previously been accepted and which has the appropriate installations to host this species, the trip to the zoo could not be done before the Spanish Custom authorities issued the required permits needed.

Finally after three months, the permits to move the female macaque arrived and with much sadness, but happiness as well, Chafi left MONA.  At present, Chafi is getting to know the other members of her new family: Benito, Sara and Nova.  The latter two individuals were also saved from similar situations in the last few years.

We would like to highlight the major logistical and organizational support provided by the FAADA Foundation and for making Chafi´s rescue possible and giving her a second chance.

So now Chafi has started her new life as a member of a macaque group.  We all wish her the best of luck!

Although its creation dates back to 2007, it was not until this year that our specialized course for Field Assistants in Primate Ethology has became a solid part of our educational offering for new researchers in the area of animal behaviour. In 2010, five people will meet the challenge of taking this course which lasts between six and nine months and its main objective is to develop ethological research projects which will be useful for both the students and for our primates at the sanctuary. On May 14th, the preliminary results of one of these projects, titled "The influence of social isolation within the socialization process of a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes): A case study”, were presented and authored by Alejandra Rodríguez.  Her principle objective was to closely follow the adaptation, rehabilitation and resocialization of Africa, a female chimpanzee who arrived at MONA in 2009. A second project, currently underway by Charles Duke, will investigate possible chimpanzee learning processes through the use of inanimate novel enrichment using novel foods and plants with fixed images of humans and conspecifics.  This dynamic specialized course is supervised and managed by Miquel Llorente, Director of Research at MONA. I’m afraid that the courses are not conducted in English yet but we hope to be able to provide this soon.