NO MONKEY-HUNTING
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1995:
DILLEY, Texas––On condition of
anonymity, a prominent Texas attorney has
agreed to guarantee the payment of $75,000
due in October to secure the new home of the
South Texas Primate Observatory, a 183-acre
tract near the town of Millet. The Texas
Parks and Wildlife Department meanwhile
denies reports that it authorized hunters to
shoot any snow monkeys who might escape
from the old site at Dilley.
STPO houses a unique free-roaming
troop of snow monkeys whose families have
been studied since 1954. The colony began at
the long-defunct Arashiyama Sanctuary in the
monkeys’ native habitat outside Kyoto,
Japan. But young male snow monkeys tend
to escape from virtually any enclosure to seek
females each spring, and by 1972, residents
of Kyoto were fed up. Slated to be killed,
about 150 of the monkeys were instead airlifted
through an international rescue effort to
their present 58-acre enclosure within the
sprawling Burns Ranch, 60 miles south of
San Antonio.