Summerville primate center battles to keep gibbons
By Dave Munday (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Wednesday, June 27, 2007

SUMMERVILLE — A custody lawsuit that includes a dozen gibbons living near Charleston is drawing national attention.

The gibbons are living at the International Primate Protection League's sanctuary near Summerville. They were living at Primarily Primates in San Antonio but were moved in March after Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott charged that the facility was not fit for animals.

Now Primarily Primates is under new management, and they want the animals back.

The Primate Protection League, along with two other groups that also received animals from Texas, filed a lawsuit this week to keep them.

"We'd be happy to send them back if we were sure that conditions had improved," Primate Protection League founder Shirley McGreal said Tuesday. "We are concerned about their well-being."

The attorney general intervened in Texas last fall.

More than 700 animals were living "in filth," according to the lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore.

The facility was "no better than a warehouse to hold these animals until they die," the suit said.

A court appointed Lee Theisen-Watt to try to improve the situation in October.

Theisen-Watt called on McGreal to take some of the gibbons. Three volunteers flew to Texas in March to bring back the gibbons in a rented moving truck.

The attorney general dropped the case in May, saying conditions had improved under new management. Theisen-Watt was dismissed.

The facility still doesn't have cages suitable for gibbons, McGreal said.

For instance, gibbons live high up in trees. The cages in Texas were about 7 feet tall, McGreal said.

The cages near Summerville have spaces that are 20 feet tall.

A phone call to Primarily Primates on Tuesday was directed to a public relations company. The firm did not return a phone message.

Primarily Primates, which relies on donations to operate, has some information about the situation on its Web site.

"My promise to donors, advocates, and the public is that this sanctuary will be tidy, well-run, communicative, and a place advocates can be proud to support," Priscilla Feral, the new administrator, said on the site.

Feral is president of Friends of Animals, which raised money to help Primarily Primates fight the state seizure.

Stephen Tello is the new director. He worked closely with former director Wallace Swett.

"They're giving them back to essentially the same people," McGreal said.

Primarily Primates also wants two chimpanzees back from Chimps Inc. of Bend, Ore., and a steer from Marguerite Gordon of New Mexico. The chimps and steer are included in the lawsuit with the Primate Protection League.

"I hate it when two animal protection groups are fighting each other," said Bruce Wagman, an attorney with Schiff Hardin in San Francisco, who is representing the three groups wanting to keep the seized animals. "They have 500 animals on that property. Why they would need these 15, I can't understand.

"My clients did them a huge favor and now they're being harassed. The logical step is to take care of the 500 animals they have and be thankful and move on," Wagman said.

Reach Dave Munday at 745-5862 or dmunday@postand courier.com.