50 years committed to animal welfare
LAST week the AAP (Animal Advocacy and Protection) foundation celebrated 50 years of protecting exotic mammals that are victims of the pet and entertainment industry in Europe.
It all began in 1972, when Dutch founders Okko and Riga Reussen rescued and rehabilitated animals in their own home.
Today AAP has two rescue centres – one in Almere (The Netherlands) and one in Villena (Alicante) where almost 5,000 animals have passed through – and works to improve the laws that protect them throughout Europe.
In 2009, Jane Goodall, who congratulated the foundation on their 50th anniversary, inaugurated AAP Primadomus in Villena. This is the foundation’s main rescue centre for wild exotic animals in southwest Europe.
Since then, the impact in Spain has grown.
From being the first official rescue centre for exotic CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) mammals in 2013, AAP has gone on to sign a collaboration agreement and action protocol with the Guardia Civil to increase surveillance at border posts and provide resources for rescuing and depositing exotic animals confiscated by the authorities, and in 2016 opened a big cat area, the only one of its kind in Spain, which was inaugurated by Queen Sofia.
In the last 50 years, 4,850 animals have been taken in at AAP rescue centres. At least 1,794 primates and 1,727 other mammals have passed through the foundation. In 2016 AAP also began rescuing big cats, 61 of which have been rescued in recent years. In the mid-1990s, the foundation decided it would specialise only in exotic mammals and end their suffering in Europe.
They note that this can’t be done through rescue and rehabilitation alone, but also requires better legislation to prevent them from suffering as pets or as victims of the entertainment industry or illegal trafficking.
“Over the past decades, more and more EU countries have adopted legislative solutions advocated by AAP such as ‘positive listings’ which list animals allowed to be owned as pets, to regulate the exotic pet trade and a ban on the use of wild animals in circuses,” they noted. Most of the animals that come to AAP come from being kept inappropriately as pets.
Driven by social media and easy availability through the internet, in recent years there has been an increase in the purchase of wild animals as pets, spurred by the lack of specific legislation regulating and limiting the trade
To prevent this, AAP within the Positive Listing Coalition advocates the introduction of a ‘positive listing’ in Spain that clearly details the species of animals that would be considered appropriate and safe to keep.
This is a preventive tool, as opposed to the current approach, which is based on endless ‘negative listings’ of those not allowed to be kept as pets, which is difficult and costly to implement.
AAP spokesperson Marta Merchán said - with the exception of only four regions where it is banned - in Spain it is currently ‘perfectly legal (with the relevant documentation) to keep, trade and transport wild animals – from a crocodile to an elephant or a tiger’.
“Legislation that clearly delimits and defines the species that can be traded and kept as pets and prohibits all others is urgently needed to put an end once and for all to the unnecessary risks that the current situation poses to people, animals and the environment,” she said.
AAP has been fighting for years to ban the use of wild animals in circuses throughout the EU – and currently only Spain and Germany do not have national legislation restricting it.
Despite this, 78% of the Spanish population now lives in territory free of circuses with wild animals, either in the 11 regions where these shows have been banned (only Andalucía, Canary Islands, Cantabria, Castilla y León, Madrid and the Basque Country are holding out) – or in the municipalities that have declared themselves free of circuses with wild animals.
The draft bill for the national animal protection and rights act already provides for a ban on wildlife in circuses.
On October 13, Infocircos delivered more than one million signatures to the European Commission in the campaign ‘The European Union must ban wild animals in circuses’.
Launched in Spain three years ago, it became an international campaign, translated into five languages.
At the AAP Primadomus rescue centre, 80% of the big cats taken in come from circuses or breeders linked to the entertainment industry.
It focuses in particular on protecting primates smuggled illegally into the EU.
Since 2017, the Born to be Wild project has enabled AAP to prevent Barbary macaques from being smuggled into Europe from their natural habitat in Morocco.
In the coming years, AAP hopes to prepare animals that have been intercepted by customs or rescued to be returned to the wild.