Erin Wing

Erin Wing

by | Dec 23, 2021 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

“The mother cows turned to look at me and I could feel that they were asking me for help. You may not speak the same language, but you can understand when they’re asking you for something. They started to vocalize and I interpreted it as an act of mourning.”

At just 25, Erin Wing went undercover and spent the next two years working at chicken, dairy, and salmon farms documenting the institutionalized abuse of animals in these industries.

She was attracted to the work because of a deep connection she felt with animals who were her companions through childhood experiences of household violence, and it was this history that convinced her she was right for the role. But even she wasn’t prepared for all that would follow.

“I definitely went in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” laughs Wing. “I thought: I will do one investigation that will change everyone’s perspective, and everyone will be vegan within a year.”

Now the Deputy Director of Investigations at Animal Outlook, Wing relinquished her anonymity to speak out about what she saw on several American farms, and her testimony is confronting.

Foremost in her stories is the constant presence of violence.

“Those environments are meant to take away all the better parts of yourself, all the parts that feel compassion, that feel happiness, that feel kindness, because you can’t really feel much of anything,” she says. Workers must become desensitized in order to survive.

At a salmon farm in Maine – the first-ever investigation of a salmon factory farm in America – she remembers looking into a bucket where a salmon was slowly suffocating to death. Noticing her discomfort, a co-worker tried to reassure her: “It used to bum me out, the way we kill these animals – but then you get used to it.”

Erin Wing, Deputy Director of Investigations at the animal advocacy NGO Animal Outlook, spends time with Clover at Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / #unboundproject / We Animals
Erin Wing, Deputy Director of Investigations at the animal advocacy NGO Animal Outlook, offers broccoli to Clover at Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / #unboundproject / We Animals

It was through stolen moments with the animals – like lingering in the back area of a milking facility to show the cows a moment of affection – that Wing managed to stay connected to her humanity. When you see the animals for who they are, she says, “it’s hard to ignore that better part of yourself that says, ‘is what I’m doing right?’”

Despite the personal toll, Wing is quick to re-centre the animals. “It is all about them,” she insists.

Erin Wing, Deputy Director of Investigations at the animal advocacy NGO Animal Outlook, spends time with Ferd at Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / #unboundproject / We Animals
Erin Wing, Deputy Director of Investigations at the animal advocacy NGO Animal Outlook, shares fruit with Ferd at Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / #unboundproject / We Animals

“I describe this job as existing in solidarity with them, seeing their experiences first-hand, and coming away with the animals’ testimony.”

When asked about the worst things she has seen, Wing doesn’t hesitate – there are countless examples. She describes an injured cow being dragged and hoisted 20 feet into the air by her hips and sprayed in the face with a high-pressure hose.

In her last investigation, at Dick Van Dam Dairy, a factory farm in Southern California, the violence was visceral and constant with workers beating the cows every single day. “I was being affected in a way that I wasn’t able to control,” she remembers. “The degree of violence was pulling me back into memories, situations that I hadn’t been in since I was young. And I realized this was very dangerous for me mentally.”

She knew that her remaining time as an investigator was limited.

“I describe it as maintaining this dam inside of myself, and after every investigation there was one crack in the dam, and then another. There was no way I could keep going and keep up the facade of just being another worker. I knew that once that dam broke I would be at risk of losing a part of myself that I was afraid I would never be able to get back: that ability to connect to other animals in a way that is meaningful.”

Wing believes that the public seeing this footage will be surprised not only by the abuse, but also to discover what animals who are farmed are really like – which is precisely why footage captured undercover is such an important resource.

“We hope to change public perception of animals, and hopefully people see them as being worthy of our protection, and that their suffering does matter,” says Wing.

Erin Wing, Deputy Director of Investigations at the animal advocacy NGO Animal Outlook, spends time with Doodle at Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / #unboundproject / We Animals
Erin Wing, Deputy Director of Investigations at the animal advocacy NGO Animal Outlook, spends time with Lola at Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / #unboundproject / We Animals
Erin Wing, Deputy Director of Investigations at the animal advocacy NGO Animal Outlook, spends time with Smokey at Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / #unboundproject / We Animals

She recounts one night shift at the dairy farm, finding two newborn calves dead in the dirt.

“The mother cows turned to look at me and I could feel that they were asking me for help. You may not speak the same language, but you can understand when they’re asking you for something. They started to vocalize and I interpreted it as an act of mourning.”

This is one reason that the animal agriculture industry operates under such secrecy, says Wing. “They don’t want people to see that these animals are sentient, that they have family units, that they can show affection, that they are intelligent in many different unique ways.”

Erin Wing, Deputy Director of Investigations at the animal advocacy NGO Animal Outlook, spends time with Bowie and Orin at Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / #unboundproject / We Animals
Erin Wing, Deputy Director of Investigations at the animal advocacy NGO Animal Outlook, spends time with Ginger at Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / #unboundproject / We Animals

Sometimes footage is compelling evidence bolstering legal action against offending facilities. From the four investigations that Wing undertook, one chicken farm was closed, and the owner banned from working with animals for a year. The other three facilities are still operating.

While working in the field felt like she was shouldering the immense responsibility of the work alone, retiring from investigations has allowed Wing to feel part of a greater movement working together toward a better world for animals. “It’s what I always wanted to do with my life ever since I was a little girl.”

Looking to the future, she is excited about Animal Outlook’s new Farm Transitions program, which will help farmers transition from farming animals to farming plants.

“It’s an alternative that is offered to farmers that shows that you don’t have to participate in these animals’ suffering, you don’t need to desensitize yourself, there is another way and a better way.”

Erin Wing, Deputy Director of Investigations at the animal advocacy NGO Animal Outlook, spends time with Lola at Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve.

Erin Wing, Deputy Director of Investigations at the animal advocacy NGO Animal Outlook, spends time with Lola at Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / #unboundproject / We Animals

Wing doesn’t think she could ever go back to a life outside of animal advocacy after all that she has seen. And despite the horror, she still has hope: “I see the future as being very bright.”

A big thank you to Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve for hosting Unbound’s photo shoot with Erin Wing.

Written by Anna Mackiewicz
Photos by Jo-Anne McArthur

Chihiro Okada

Chihiro Okada

by | Nov 12, 2021 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

“I discovered that animals are placed in far worse situations, are treated far worse than humans. So I really started to put a stronger focus on the treatment of animals.”

When Chihiro Okada was a young student in Japan she imagined she might one day work in the field of human rights, perhaps tackling world hunger. But then, as a member of her school’s newspaper, she worked on a story about pets. The story brought her to local animal shelters and pounds where she learned just how many homeless companion animals in Japan are euthanized. She was shocked, she says through an interpreter.

Ms. Chihiro Okada, Director of Animal Rights Centre Japan. Photo by Itsuka Yakumo / #unboundproject / We Animals.

“I discovered that animals are placed in far worse situations, are treated far worse than humans. So I really started to put a stronger focus on the treatment of animals.”

Today Okada is the director of Animal Rights Centre Japan (ARCJ), the country’s most impactful organization for animal advocacy. The work of the group, under Okada’s leadership, highlights much of the progress being made for animals in Japan in the last two decades, and a slow but steady cultural shift.

After Okada’s revelation about the ill-treatment of companion animals in Japan, she started university with a new attention on animals. She traveled and studied abroad, first to Canada, where she visited more animal shelters, then to Australia, where she recalls meeting a teacher who was vegetarian. “That was then I thought, ‘ok there’s a lot more I can do regarding my interest toward animals,’” she recalls. And upon returning to Japan she quickly connected with ARCJ and began transitioning toward being vegan.

On her first day as a volunteer with ARCJ, Okada was told to read a particular book by someone named Peter Singer. The book, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals, published in 1975, is of course now considered a pioneering text on animal rights, but to Okada it was new, profound and put into words all that she was already feeling.

At that time, she recalls, there were no groups in Japan focusing on farmed animal welfare. Rather, ARCJ’s eye was fixed on banning animal testing and fur fashion. The group ran campaigns and organized large protests and marches; and since 2005, when ARCJ began campaigning against fur, Okada reports there has been a 94% decrease in the importation of fur products. “We can say that is a clear sign of success.” And even better, she says, was the closure of Japan’s last fur farm in 2016, effectively ending the fur industry in the country.

Historical photo provided by ARCJ.

Today Okada has been with ARCJ for twenty years, 17 of those in the role of director, and she and her team have shifted focus.

“The biggest issue that we believe needs to be tackled in Japan today is the treatment of farmed animals,” she says. “There are no other organizations like us currently working on these issues, both to improve the overall status of animal welfare in Japan, as well as working toward the overall decrease of animal farming.”

The group does this via consumer and corporate education, and lobbying for change. Last year, ARCJ was able to stop a legal proposal to ban free range chicken farming. ARCJ also advocates for increased production and availability of plant-based foods by speaking with food producers, grocers, restaurants, and hotels.

“Recently, more major companies here have been taking action toward doing something veggie or plant-based; it’s grown into a bigger range than we ever could have hoped for,” says Okada.

And Okada has been able to fulfill a personal goal of creating a “strong, nationwide animal rights action network,” of people and groups all around the country to share information and resources. “People now know they can come to us, contact us about anything animal rights related.”

Ms. Chihiro Okada talks with a long-time collaborator of animal rights activities. Photo by Itsuka Yakumo / #unboundproject / We Animals.
Ms. Chihiro Okada buries a dead sparrow she found during the interview. Photo by Itsuka Yakumo / #unboundproject / We Animals.
Photo by Itsuka Yakumo / #unboundproject / We Animals.

Looking toward the future of animal advocacy in Japan, Okada says her next ambitions are to see the use of battery cages and sow stalls end by 2030, and see food producers increase their range of animal-free foods, “to at least half of what they are producing,” she says, “within my lifetime.” But her greatest goal, she says, is to “pass this organization down, eventually, to the next person who can make this group into a huge social movement all around Japan that works toward the end of speciesism and the mistreatment of all animals.”

For now, Okada and ARCJ are pleased to see that the issue of animal treatment is finally permeating the popular culture, and that animal welfare is now a term and idea that the people of Japan are coming to understand.

“Five years ago when we said ‘animal welfare’ –which is an English word that we’ve made into Japanese—many people did not know what it meant. Since then we’ve been able to raise politicians’ and consumers’ awareness about factory farming,” she says. “We’ve been able to spread the fundamental understanding of what animal welfare is.”

What began as Okada’s small story on pets has blossomed into organized advocacy for all animals in Japan.

Written by Jessica Scott-Reid
Photographs by Itsuka Yakumo (with exception of the historical ARCJ photo)

Yumin Chen

Yumin Chen

by | Oct 18, 2021 | Contemporary, Video

“My job is to do everything, wherever there is animal suffering.”

Directed by Kelly Guerin

Yumin Chen is known by many as one of the most beloved and hard-working animal advocates in Taiwan. With over 25 years of experience, she is a long-time animal advocate and the Director of EAST (Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan). Her work involves inspecting farms to help enforce welfare standards, advising on the development of these standards, leading campaigns against animal cruelty, and petitioning corporations and government bodies to implement anti-cruelty practices.

Daniela Romero Waldhorn

Daniela Romero Waldhorn

by | Sep 20, 2021 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

“There is the belief that activists’ needs are secondary to the movement….. We have a collective problem, and we need an entire movement overhaul.”

“I was at home, looking out the window and saw that someone had left a box in the middle of the street,” says Daniela Romero Waldhorn when asked if it was possible to pinpoint where her animal activism began. “Immediately, cars drove by and crushed it completely. Then I realised what was in that box. That person had abandoned around five baby kittens to be run over.” Romero Waldhorn was just seven years old at the time.

Watching the dogs and cats taking their chances on the Chilean streets, knowing they were desperate for food and affection, had always broken her heart, but it was this deliberate act of cruelty that changed her. She made a personal promise to do whatever she could to help animals and began right away by feeding the strays in her neighbourhood. As a child, there was little more she could do, but this was just the beginning.

Barcelona, Spain, 30th July 2021. Environmental portrait of researcher and lecturer Daniela Romero Waldhorn. Photo by Selene Magnolia / #unboundproject / We Animals.

A chance meeting with a vegan during her college years inspired her to become vegetarian, but also to conduct her own research into animal agriculture.

“Until then, I was not really aware of how much suffering was behind my foods.”

But with knowledge came action, and over the next few months, Romero Waldhorn gradually became vegan.

In 2004, she co-created a network of street activists, and organised her first protest against the use of animals in circuses, specifically the elephant Ramba and the other animals used by the Los Tachuelas circus in Santiago. Romero Waldhorn remembers her early years in grassroots activism with fondness. “We were a bunch of strangers, at first, who shared the dream of building a more just and compassionate world for all. That is simply beautiful. I learned a lot from their experience, their courage, and the power we can have together to transform the world.”

And yet something was troubling her. “Shouting out in protest was, somehow, liberating but I always had doubts about whether that was the best thing I, or we, collectively could do.

Unfortunately, at that time, I didn’t have access to reliable information to make better decisions.”

While her childhood pledge to help animals was born of a visceral reaction to a traumatic incident, it has been her cool-headed commitment to evidence-based activism that has guided Romero Waldhorn since. In founding a local branch of AnimaNaturalis, she was able to learn about effective campaigning from more experienced activists. Together they campaigned successfully to free more than 100 monkeys used for experimentation by the Catholic University of Chile. Later Romero Waldhorn went on to work as an undercover investigator, documenting and revealing to the world how animals are tortured in festivals and how chickens are slaughtered for their meat.

Witnessing severe suffering inevitably exacts an emotional and psychological toll, yet enduring pressure and judgment from others within the animal rights movement has also proven difficult.

“Once, I was publicly sanctioned by another activist for going to the beach. She told me it was clear that I did not care enough for animals and should have been leafleting instead.”

This personal attack was not an isolated case. Over the years, Romero Waldhorn has experienced racist, sexist, and xenophobic discrimination from within the movement. Her work has also made her – and her family – the target of dangerous threats from powerful forces outside the movement. “While the persecution that some social activists face in Chile (and other Latin American countries) is not a common experience, it exists.”

After 17 years of working in the movement, she began to experience burnout. Rather than abandon her work as an activist, she used that difficult period to examine why she and others succumb to activism exhaustion. She points to the culture of martyrdom that leads activists to impose unrealistic expectations on themselves while organisations push supporters and staff to constantly demonstrate their commitment.

“There is the belief that activists’ needs are secondary to the movement, and everything and everyone can be sacrificed for the sake of animals–notably, everyone who is not a cis-white man. We have a collective problem, and we need an entire movement overhaul.”

Daniela Romero Waldhorn works as a researcher at Rethink Priorities, a think tank “dedicated to figuring out how to make the world a better place” where she investigates the potential for helping prawns and shrimps. Photo by Selene Magnolia / #unboundproject / We Animals.
Daniela Romero Waldhorn is studying for a PhD in social psychology to help inform a more evidence-based strategy for animal advocacy. Photo by Selene Magnolia / #unboundproject / We Animals.

It’s possible that such a journey, seeing and experiencing all that she has, might have driven Romero Waldhorn onto a different path, but she says she remains “impact-focused and hungry for justice.” Today, she works as a researcher at Rethink Priorities, a think tank “dedicated to figuring out how to make the world a better place” where she investigates the potential for helping prawns and shrimps. It’s a strategic decision as it is estimated that these animals are killed in larger numbers for human consumption than any other. At the same time, she is studying for a PhD in social psychology to help inform a more evidence-based strategy for animal advocacy.

Activist, researcher, and lecturer Daniela Romero Waldhorn. Photo by Selene Magnolia / #unboundproject / We Animals.

This self-described “crazy cat lady who still believes deeply in human compassion” has found her role and her mission. Her twin strategy–helping the largest number of animals, while identifying the root causes of speciesism and potential ways to overcome it–is already an enormous contribution to the movement. And yet, perhaps, there is something else.

Romero Waldhorn has found her peace. She makes time to dance cumbia, walk in wild places, spend time with loved ones, and, yes, go to the beach. Her example of how we can each remain effective and committed while protecting ourselves from burnout might just be her greatest gift of all.

Interview and story by Kate Fowler. Photos by Selene Magnolia.

Gwenna Hunter

Gwenna Hunter

by | Aug 20, 2021 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

“When I came to the knowledge that animals were conscious, with the same level of awareness as us, it kinda shattered my whole reality… Now I’m a vegan, an animal and human rights activist. ”

Gwenna Hunter

About six years ago, Gwenna Hunter found her calling as an activist. At that time, she was living in Los Angeles and working as a recruiter for IT personnel, some of whom were being employed by military contractors around the globe. Hunter remembers her moment of clarity, initially communicated to her in a dream: “I was like, ‘I don’t think I’m contributing to the world. I might be on the wrong team here,’” she says. “I was just about me: traveling, buying shoes, and living what I thought was a fulfilling life.” While she had always been acutely aware of her own spiritual journey and persistent search for meaning, she didn’t expect her change of direction to be so dramatic. “When I came to the knowledge that animals were conscious, with the same level of awareness as us, it kinda shattered my whole reality,” she says.  She also credits the particularly eye-opening experience of watching Erin Janus’ five-minute “Dairy is Scary” video with pushing her to eliminate animal products from her life.

“Now I’m a vegan, an animal and human rights activist. I’m out here coordinating events. You could have never told me this would be my life,” she says, laughing.

Gwenna Hunter stands outside a meat packing plant in silent protest during a cow vigil. Photo by Nikki Ritcher / #unboundproject / We Animals.
This slaughterhouse in Pico Rivera kills an estimated 1,200 cattle every week. Photo by Nikki Ritcher / #unboundproject / We Animals.

Hunter finds herself at the intersection of two liberation movements in the United States, and specifically Los Angeles: the liberation and empowerment of Black lives, and helping others to include all sentient creatures within their circle of empathy, primarily through the elimination of animal products from their diets.

Hunter’s work is intersectional, and she speaks to a broad range of people and communities across LA, especially within the city’s Black and brown neighborhoods. As the vegan food aid coordinator and project lead for the LA chapter of Vegan Outreach, she helps distribute fresh meals and groceries throughout greater Los Angeles. She also works directly with a host of local organizations including Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, Black Women for Wellness, Black Women Farmers of LA and LGBT Center South to extend Vegan Outreach’s distribution network of plant-based meals and groceries. She does additional outreach and education through the LA chapter of The Animal Save Movement, called Los Angeles Health Save in collaboration with a social justice organization called Downtown Crenshaw. She has even started two groups – Vegans for Black Lives Matter (2020) and Vegans of LA (2015) – to foster continuing dialogue. (Both groups have existed entirely online since the beginning of the pandemic.)

Hunter’s primary goal through this work is to help more people discover veganism, particularly those in underserved communities. By steering clear of shame tactics and instead introducing someone to a way of eating (and thinking) that considers both their stomach and their heart, she employs the same empathy that initially drew her to this work.

Gwenna Hunter packs fresh local produce into bags at a vegan aid program in Los Angeles with Vegan Outreach. Photo by Nikki Ritcher / #unboundproject / We Animals.
Gwenna Hunter, Avaion Ruth, and Kim King with Vegan Outreach stand in front of roughly 100 bags of fresh local produce given to local communities impacted by the COVID-19 crisis in Los Angeles. Photo by Nikki Ritcher / #unboundproject / We Animals.
Fresh produce! Photo by Nikki Ritcher / #unboundproject / We Animals.

“In regard to animal suffering, I always try to get people to feel something,” she says. “So if you know what it’s like to suffer, and you can stand in that place, at that moment, you don’t want anyone else to feel that either. I’ve never met anyone that doesn’t know what it feels like to suffer, in some form.”

She uses this approach to help others make empathetic connections across race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and — in the case of veganism — species. “When someone is in that place of tenderness and thinking about their own suffering, I might inform them that a cow is pregnant for nine months, just like a human woman. And that when we take her male child for veal, that’s her son.” She consciously uses terms like “son” and “daughter” to describe animals and their relationships, to help people make connections to their own lives. “I don’t do any shaming; I did that once when I first became vegan, and it didn’t end well,” she says with a laugh.

“I came into this because of love and compassion, that’s how I want other people to experience it.”

Gwenna Hunter tries to capture images and video of the cow holding area that are waiting for slaughter at a beef packing plant in Pico Rivera. Photo by Nikki Ritcher / #unboundproject / We Animals.

Hunter is likewise careful not to conflate animals’ emotional lives with those of humans, instead finding their common ground by applying her intuitive logic that non-human animals experience emotions like distress, pain, contentment and excitement. Why, then, would we choose not to believe that fundamental aspects of the meat and dairy industries cause them to suffer? She says she might explain to someone how artificially inseminating a female cow and taking her calf is robbing her most natural, deeply-felt instincts, and that a mother will often cry for her missing young for weeks. Why wouldn’t we believe that that mother is in distress?

“Lately I’ve started calling animals our brothers and sisters,” Hunter says. “We’ve been programmed from an early age to eat our brothers and sisters. It’s insane, and it’s no different from the blueprint we’ve used for enslaving other humans: ‘Oh, they don’t feel pain’; ‘they’re not fully human.’ It’s textbook exploitation, and we’ve just gotta be stronger and smarter. We’ve gotta help wake each other up.”

Her work aims to connect dots without creating false equivalencies, and to provide support by showing people alternatives. “I learned the hard way to never approach these conversations from the animal rights point-of-view,” she says. “If you’re not vegan yet, it’s gonna sound very weird to you to hear about animal rights— especially in the Black community, where maybe you got harassed by the police yesterday.” She says that when she talks about animal issues, she often doesn’t use the words themselves. “I talk about animals from the perspective of the blueprint for oppression — the blueprint of what slavery looks like, and how this is the same blueprint being used all over the world to exploit different marginalized groups, people and species.” Hunter also concedes that animal concerns simply may not be everyone’s window into veganism, particularly in the Black community, where more localized, personal issues like health, diet and chronic disease are often of more immediate concern. She continually works to include the ecological argument for veganism in her ongoing outreach, and believes she’s at her most effective when she can combine these different components.

Gwenna Hunter, founder of Vegans of LA, a group “celebrating urban vegan pop culture.” She is also a coordinator of community engagement and events for Greater Los Angeles at Vegan Outreach. Photo by Nikki Ritcher / #unboundproject / We Animals.

These days, Hunter finds inspiration everywhere, not least from the fact that African Americans are the fastest growing vegan demographic in the United States (in 2016, the Pew Research Center found that 8% of African-American adults identified as vegan, compared with 3% of American adults overall). In addition to being deeply involved in the social justice uprisings of the past year, she says the pandemic has given her a deeper awareness of the need to maintain her own mental health, and has become more proactive about her own well-being. “I know people who are stimulated by drama, but I need to be in a place of joy,” she says of her work, which can be emotionally and physically grueling.

“Even though I know the darkness of this horror movie — what we’re really trying to do here is get people to stop eating dead bodies — when I can find a way to do this joyfully, I can go for a long time and put out good work.”

She’s humble, resourceful and knows how to play to her strengths. “I’m no scholar and I’m terrible at memorizing statistics, but I feel like I’m an expert at being a person,” she says with a laugh. “I’m pretty good when it comes to love and compassion. So I can’t go wrong when I talk about those things.”

Photos by Nikki Ritcher. Interview and story by Evan Shamoon.

Dr. Carole Noon

Dr. Carole Noon

by | May 30, 2020 | Contemporary, Video

Founder of Save the Chimps

We’re at the end of Carole Noon Lane on the grounds of Save the Chimps, a 190-acres sanctuary in the Florida Flatwoods. The grounds here are divided into twelve three-acre islands, one per ‘family.’ Each parcel is outfitted with hurricane-proof concrete dwellings and what look like oversized park playground structures. During our time on the grounds, some of the chimps have taken an interest in our presence and our interviews, watching bemusedly from their far off perches.

This sanctuary would not be here without the tenacity of its founder, Dr. Carole Noon. It doesn’t take long into interviews with friends and staff before a very clear image comes to light – Dr. Noon was a force of nature who would not take no for an answer.

Dr. Carole Noon hosing down the enclosure that houses the rescued chimpanzees at Save The Chimps. USA, 2008.
Dr. Carole Noon providing a drink to a rescued chimpanzee at Save The Chimps Sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Florida. USA, 2008.

In 1997, the US Air Force was set to ‘retire’ the 141 chimpanzees in its space program. With only $150,000 and no sanctuary to speak of, Dr. Noon submitted a bid to purchase these animals, unsurprisingly, to no avail. Instead, most of the chimps were sold to the Coulson Foundation, a medical research lab in New Mexico. The chimps would be sent to live in isolation in the dungeons of Coulston, suspended in 5’x5’x7’ metal cages while awaiting the next experiment.

And so, Dr. Noon sued the Air Force in 1997. In 2001, after four years of legal battles, the first chimps arrived at their new home in Florida. Dr. Noon succeeded in her mission and spent the final years of her life dedicated to her cause. In 2009, she passed away at her home on the sanctuary grounds.

Dr. Noon’s legacy lives on in the over 250 chimpanzees who have been rescued from research, entertainment, and the exotic pet trade and who now call Save the Chimps their home.

Dr. Carole Noon touches the fingers of a rescued chimpanzee at Save The Chimps.
Save the Chimps founder Dr. Carole Noon with staff and her dogs.
Dr. Carole Noon, founder of Save the Chimps

“One thing about Carole is she did not take no for an answer. If someone told her she could not do something, that was the guarantee she was going to make it happen.”

Film and story by Kelly Guerin. Photos by Jo-Anne McArthur.