Dear ZAA Members,
Happy Halloween!
It was great seeing so many of you at the conference in Columbus earlier this month. 😊 I believe it was a great success. We are busy now debriefing and looking for ways to continually improve so that 2025 in San Antonio will be even better. We are also now busy preparing for our Midyear Professional Development Meeting to be held Feb 11-14, 2025, in beautiful Issaquah, WA. More details will soon be available.
Next week on Nov 6th, we will be holding our first, since I’ve been in my position, member-only webinar. The objectives of the webinar are 1) to offer an update on our new membership platform (Novi AMS) and the information bank (Basecamp); 2) to discuss organization growth; and 3) to provide an opportunity for members to ask questions. Please remember that you must register for the webinar to attend. Click here for the registration link.
I would also like to follow up on the proposed Captive Primate Safety Act (CPSA). The Board, with input from Tom Albert, the Government Affairs Committee, and me, has had many discussions regarding our approach. We will continue to be open to a dialogue with the bill sponsor and other proponents about the bill. At this point, the bill does not prohibit Class C licensed facilities from having public interactions with primates (non-Class 1 animals). Here is some additional explanation provided by Tom… It [the bill] does this by creating a new category of "prohibited primate species" rather than simply adding primates to the existing category of "prohibited wildlife species". The bill then adds "prohibited primate species" to the existing statutory USDA exemption provision but does NOT add them to the no direct physical contact prohibition (which only applies to "prohibited wildlife species", i.e., big cats). This also means that all of the additional statutory provisions regarding trained employees and veterinarians, etc., as well as the public barrier/15 feet restriction would not apply to primates.
Finally, I’m sure many of you have seen AZA’s recent policy change regarding non-human primate (NHP) encounters. In contrast, we believe that safe and mutually positive encounters can be enriching for both the human and NHP, and so ZAA has no intention of changing our current policy regarding NHP ambassador animal encounters.
Best,
Kelly
Dr. Kelly George
Executive Director
(941) 621-2021 - Office
(941) 421-2413 - Mobile
