Did you know that today is UN World Wildlife Day? It’s a day to celebrate and raise awareness of the world’s wild animals and plants and the theme for 2016 is “The future of wildlife is in our hands”.

So this World Wildlife Day we’re raising awareness about the terrible suffering that is inflicted upon monkeys across the world by the animal research industry.

Non-human primates are intelligent animals with complex psychological and social needs. Above all they are wild animals and that is where they belong - in the jungles of South East Asia, the plains of Africa and the lush forests of Mauritius.

• Baboons do not belong in the Institute of Primate Research in Kenya, pacing and circling inside their small, barren metal cages, subjected to shocking and invasive experiments.
• Macaque monkeys do not belong at the Max Planck Institute of Biological Cybernetics in Germany, deliberately deprived of water for days, forcibly restrained, their heads immobilised by a post implanted in their skulls and forced to carry out mundane tasks day after day.

Tragically this is the living nightmare that faces the many thousands of monkeys who suffer at the hands of the global animal research industry.

Time and time again, our pioneering and hard-hitting investigations have exposed the brutality and misery inflicted on monkeys in the chain of supply from the trapping fields to the laboratory cage.

Some, such as baboons in Kenya, are cruelly snatched from the wild and used in research. While others, such as the long-tailed macaques in Mauritius, Vietnam and Cambodia, are imprisoned in large-scale breeding facilities.  Their offspring are packed into small wooden crates and shipped as cargo on airplanes such as Air France to laboratories across the world.

This is a far cry from the freedom these highly sensitive and intelligent wild animals so deserve. We believe that their cruel captivity and the horrific animal research they are subjected to is morally unacceptable and unnecessary to improving human health.

This World Wildlife Day, please take action to end the terrible exploitation and suffering of our closest living relatives in the animal kingdom.

Their future really is in your hands!