If you want a lemur from Madagascar for a helper monkey, forget it: poachers don’t work for peanuts these days. If you’re a researcher for an institution like the Field Museum, though, and you can convince the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department that you need specimens of rare creatures, then you’re in like Flynn, says Peter Wood, a research associate from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Well, usually.
Having gotten no response by June 9, Wood called the CEO at work to ask what was going on, and was patched through instead to the head of security. “Have I reached the U.S. White House by mistake? You’re putting me through to ‘protective services’?!” Wood said the guy demanded his address, which was already on the letter he’d sent to McCarter. “He then read to me my phone number which was on the same letter…in an apparent attempt to intimidate me. Didn’t work. He hung up on me when I wondered–out loudly–why I was talking to a rental cop.”
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So what was the museum trying to discover with all these dead lemurs they weren’t allowed to have? “As far as the ‘research’ is concerned, it is pretty convoluted so I can’t really say,” said Wood.
Wood digested McCarter’s fax over the weekend; that Monday, the 17th, he called Fish and Wildlife to check out McCarter’s story about the permit, then ground out a riposte to McCarter’s fax. “The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) has confirmed to PETA that it denied The Field Museum’s request to import more than 150 endangered Madagascan lemurs for use in research. According to the agency, the denial was based more on the merits (or lack thereof) of the museum’s permit application than Madagascar’s ‘political instability’ as you allege.”
