Andy Burton

Review of Wild Futures

We visit the sanctuary a few times a year and my w...

We visit the sanctuary a few times a year and my wife and I both adopt a monkey each. The staff are all very knowledgeable and we always enjoy visiting.

My advice to anyone planning a visit / reading the previous reviews is to look up the word sanctuary and what it means. These are monkeys that have been kept as pets, often in poor conditions and have suffered both physical and emotional trauma....so when people complain that there are not many monkeys....good!! The less abused monkeys there are the better! You should be happy the fewer monkeys they have in their care, not complaining. The ideal scenario is that there is no need for a monkey sanctuary and that all of the animals are where the belong....in the wild! Sadly humans have ruined that for these monkeys and they can no longer go back to the wild so this offers the next best thing. The entrance fee is to help a small charity provide care for abused animals.. As for people complaining there weren't allowed to interact, not even sure what to say to that. Imagine these people like to bang on the glass at the zoo and enjoy distressing animals, who knows, but the staff there have never been anything other than very kind and friendly to us. They explain in detail their natural behaviour and the problems the monkeys have. Not sure why the experts being against upsetting an animal is a problem to be honest.

People comparing a sanctuary to a zoo is also laughable. Maybe people should look into how these magnificent wild animals end up in a zoo and then they will understand why sanctuaries and education are so important.

So in summary, if you want a day's entertainment for the kids, eating junk food and playing arcade games, by all means go to the zoo where you can see wild animals that have been taken from where they belong and from their families and placed into a small cage for you to gawp at. If however you actually care about wild animals and would like to learn about them whilst supporting a charity and helping to care for monkeys that until they reached the sanctuary, have had a pretty miserable life, then definitely visit the monkey sanctuary. View your entrance fee as a donation and take enjoyment from the fact that these animals may now at least live out their days well cared for. Doesn't matter if you are there for 10 minutes or all day, you will have contributed to helping animals rather than harming them and that is surely worth a trip. And most of all, let's hope for a day when sanctuaries for abused animals are no longer needed. In the meantime, the people at the sanctuary do an amazing job as far as i'm concerned (and no, I have no links with the sanctuary aside from being a supporter / adopter).