Wild Futures

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Primate welfare and conservation charity. Our flagship project is The Monkey Sanctuary in Cornwall.

Wild Futures' Vision: A world in which people understand and respect the welfare and conservation needs of primates and habitats, where primates have a wild future and the need to provide sanctuary for victims of the pet trade has passed. Wild Futures' Mission: Wild Futures promotes the welfare and conservation of primates and habitats worldwide. In particular we are working to see an end to the UK primate pet trade while providing sanctuary to primates in need. We deliver far reaching education programmes to engage all sectors of the community on primates, conservation and environmental issues. Wild Futures is the only UK charity with the holistic approach that combines an educational and environmental remit dedicated to promoting the welfare, conservation and survival of our closest living relatives, the non-human primates; working to end the primate trade and abuse of primates in captivity, promoting the rehabilitation of captive primates and the preservation of those in the wild, whilst operating a sanctuary for primates in need of a long term home. The thriving UK primate pet trade means that Wild Futures’ knowledge, expertise and resources are increasingly in demand. Wild Futures continues to be instrumental in striving to protect primates in the UK through its efforts in raising awareness of primates with key decision makers and the public alike.

20/10/2026

Since announcing the closure of The Monkey Sanctuary site and the rehoming process, we apologise that we have not been able to post as regularly about the monkeys and general sanctuary life. Whilst we are working hard to secure their next steps, life at The Monkey Sanctuary has continued as normal, with the usual ups and downs of sanctuary life. We want to take this opportunity to update you all on how the past few months here have been.

Day to day the monkeys’ lives have remained very much the same, with our dedicated team keeping things calm and normal for them. Like most of the country, we were enjoying lots of lovely warm weather here in Cornwall during the summer, which meant lots of happy, sunbathing monkeys. Although at times, the temperature and humidity were very high for us humans, the monkeys were loving it. We were coming up with lots of new and interesting ways to help keep the monkeys cool, particularly some of our older individuals. Our wonderful team of volunteers were creating lots of varied frozen food items that we could give to the monkeys in various forms. It created lots of really enriching moments for the monkeys where they had to think of the best way to eat them. Some didn’t want to touch it with their hands, so would try and lick them without picking them up but would get frustrated when they moved around! We also prepared lots of paddling pools for the monkeys. Many of the monkeys will just sit near the pools or dip their hands in to forage through the food items scattered in there, so we were shocked when we saw Lola as got in fully and was splashing the water around, having a wonderful time. It was a delight to witness.

Sadly, we have suffered more sadness over the last few months with the loss of a few of our dear monkey friends, due to ill health. Finley the marmoset passed away in the summer following a very short illness. Finley was a considered, yet playful individual. He had an ability to assess situations quickly and would always make reasoned decisions. His loyalty and measured nature made him an adored companion to all of his monkey friends.

Capuchin Boo Boo also sadly passed away after a cancerous mass was discovered in her chest during a routine check-up. Boo Boo was a remarkable monkey with a truly wonderful, curious, and playful nature. She is remembered fondly for how she loved to spend time in the sunshine grooming with her friends and how her loud hoots about delicious food could be heard across the entire sanctuary.

Our dear Barbary macaque, Chico, also passed away in the summer due to heart failure. Chico took everything in his stride and kept a watchful gaze over the happenings across the site. He loved basking in the sunshine at the top of his enclosure as it has a view of the whole sanctuary – the perfect spot from which to stand guard. His intelligent, mischievous nature is sorely missed here at the sanctuary.

We are all deeply saddened by their deaths and they are dearly missed by us all. However, we are grateful and honoured to have known and cared for them at our sanctuary.

We have celebrated a few anniversaries over the past few months, including Chanel’s 23rd arrival anniversary in August and Greta’s 3rd arrival anniversary in September. We also celebrated Tam’s 30th birthday on September 10th and Kiwi’s 30th birthday on October 1st. Our volunteers and primate care interns baked wonderful monkey treats for them all to celebrate!

We have taken many of the monkeys for their pre-departure vet visits, ensuring that they have the health checks needed to send them on safely to their new homes. This requires a lot of investment from the team to ensure that the monkeys are safe and comfortable during the entire training, catching, and recovery process for each visit. Thank you to each and everyone of you that contributed to our appeal to help us cover the costs of these important healthcare checks.

As we transitioned into autumn, the monkeys were able to enjoy foraging through fallen leaves and prizing open conkers. Although the nights are a bit colder now and the days a bit shorter, there is still lots of autumnal sunshine throughout the day, so the monkeys are still busying themselves outside and even fitting in some sunny grooming sessions together.

We hope to update you all more soon. Thank you again for your support, generosity, kind messages, well wishes, and love over the last several months, we appreciate you all.

29/09/2026

Thank you so much to everyone who donated to our recent appeal, you raised an incredible £17,768 towards our ongoing vet bills and rehoming costs for the primates at The Monkey Sanctuary. This will go a long way to cover those costs, and so we cannot thank you all enough for your generosity and support throughout this process. You continue to go above and beyond to help these incredible primates, and we are so overwhelmingly grateful for your support as we navigate these crucial next steps.

We will be updating you soon with more information on the monkeys and their current journey, as we know that many of you want to know. But please be aware that the rehoming journey is a complex process with lots of moving parts, so we appreciate your patience and understanding with this.

On behalf of all the people and monkeys here, thank you so much, once again, for your care, compassion, and generosity.

12/09/2026

Please donate today to help us rehome our monkeys.

Help the monkeys as they embark on their next steps by donating to cover the costs of their move. Alongside their regular food and medications while they await their move, your vital support will fund the monkey’s essential pre-departure vet checks and facilitate their transfer.

www.wildfutures.org/donate

Thank you ❤️

08/09/2026

Thank you so much to everyone who has donated to our rehoming appeal so far. We are so beyond grateful for your support, but we are still in need of your help.

Please donate today to help us rehome our monkeys.

www.wildfutures.org/donate

Help the monkeys as they embark on their next steps by donating to cover the costs of their move. Alongside their regular food and medications while they await their move, your vital support will fund the monkey’s essential pre-departure vet checks and facilitate their transfer.

Thank you ❤️

04/09/2026

Please donate today to help us rehome our monkeys.

www.wildfutures.org/donate

Help the monkeys as they embark on their next steps by donating to cover the costs of their move. Alongside their regular food and medications while they await their move, your vital support will fund the monkey’s essential pre-departure vet checks and facilitate their transfer.

Thank you ❤

01/09/2026

Thank you so much for your response to our most recent update. We see and appreciate all of the love and support that you are sending our way, your generosity in these difficult times is immeasurable, thank you.

We are still in need of your help with our next steps. Rehoming the monkeys is a very complicated process to navigate, and it is also very costly.

With the majority of the pre-departure health checks for the monkeys already completed, we are now faced with a large veterinary bill. If you are able to, please donate to our appeal to help us cover these costs.

We need your help to make this transition as smooth as possible for the monkeys, ensuring the highest standards of welfare for them throughout this journey.

www.wildfutures.org/donate

Thank you

21/08/2026

On 7th August 2026, Wild Futures announced their decision to close The Monkey Sanctuary. In the wake of this sad news, we have been flooded with messages of understanding, compassion and love. On behalf of all of the people and primates here at Wild Futures, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for your well wishes, condolences, fond memories and kind words.

The welfare of the primates remains our highest priority. While our staff continue to provide outstanding levels of everyday care for the resident monkeys, they are also working tirelessly behind-the-scenes to secure the primates’ futures. However, we still need your help to make this a reality.

Every step in this complicated process - from initial discussions, to rigorous medical examinations and testing, and ultimately, to the transport of the monkeys to their new accommodations – is both necessary and costly. It is in the face of these upcoming and overwhelming costs that we ask now for your help to raise the funds needed to rehome the monkeys who currently live at The Monkey Sanctuary.

Conversations have been continuing with carefully selected sanctuaries and organisations, all of whom share our ethos and can offer a home to one of our resident species. With every meeting, whether in-person or virtual, our dedicated team are investing considerable time into collaborating with other primate specialists, co-ordinating the logistical demand of such a large scale move and advocating for each primate and their unique personality.

In light of these ongoing but promising conversations, Wild Futures is commencing with the vital second phase: primate health checks. Physical examinations, ultrasounds, x-rays, a comprehensive blood analysis, viral and bacterial testing, and medication are required in preparation for their next steps.

Each of these essential appointments is expected to cost upward of £1,600, with the anaesthetic alone totalling £254. These estimates do not include any additional testing such as the 3 sets of sitewide faecal tests charged at £762 per round. Crucially, every test result, x-ray and scan received helps ensure the best standards of care for the monkeys before, during, and after their move.

Following the successful completion of these rigorous health checks, our staff will begin the difficult operation of transferring the primates to their new homes. The exact timeline is to be determined both by the monkeys and their best interests, and by their current and future carers. During this transitional period, and as is common and best practice, members of our staff will accompany and remain alongside the monkeys as they adjust.

Please donate now to support the monkeys through this difficult transition.

www.wildfutures.org/donate

07/08/2026

Important announcement:

Wild Futures have made the difficult decision to close the Monkey Sanctuary at our site in Cornwall. This is the announcement we all fought hard not to make, and we are devastated to share this news. We have already begun the careful process of rehoming the monkeys to carefully selected sanctuaries and organisations where they will continue to receive the expert care they deserve.

I appreciate this news may be shocking, and it is not a decision we have taken lightly nor without significant care and thought. We feel that it is in the best interests of the monkeys, whose welfare remains our top priority. I would like to take this opportunity to share with you the events and considerations that led us to this decision.

When we listed our home and sanctuary site for sale in June 2025, we were extremely hopeful that we would find a sympathetic buyer who would allow us to stay here and help us improve our sanctuary; allowing it to move forward. Towards the end of 2025, we believed that we had found that buyer. The plan was to work in partnership with the new site owners to continue the work of the sanctuary, while they took on responsibility for the long-term maintenance and care of the site. To our dismay, following six months of intense negotiations, those buyers dropped out without notice, leaving our long-term plan for the sanctuary up in the air.

Furthermore, a detailed land assessment carried out during the negotiations highlighted that our sanctuary site has begun to develop structural issues that increasingly make it unfit for purpose and no longer suitable as a long-term sanctuary. We do not believe it would be responsible to invest hundreds of thousands of pounds into a site that is no longer suitable for the sanctuary's long-term future, and whose ongoing maintenance now far surpasses the financial resources we have available to us. As such, we have made the difficult decision to direct funds towards securing a safe future for the monkeys. We are working with carefully selected organisations that share Wild Futures' values and ethics, with welfare at the forefront of their work. We will shortly launch an emergency appeal to help cover the significant costs of safely rehoming every monkey and ensuring they receive the very best care throughout this transition.

While our decision to close the sanctuary has been difficult for all involved, we want to acknowledge just what has been achieved with your support over the last 60 years. What started as rescuing woolly monkeys from a thriving pet trade in the 1960’s, grew into a world class sanctuary for rescued monkeys adapting to suit the evolving and demanding needs of the UK primate pet trade. We are proud that we were the first GFAS accredited wildlife sanctuary in Europe, and we educated hundreds of thousands of visitors on animal welfare, conservation, and the need for a ban. We are humbled by the number of people doing wonderful work around the world after having trained with Wild Futures at The Monkey Sanctuary.

We are immensely grateful to our hardworking and compassionate team, who continue to go above and beyond in caring for the monkeys while their long-term placements are finalised. We will be forever thankful to them for their love and devotion to Wild Futures’ Monkey Sanctuary.

We want to say a huge thank you to all of our supporters, donors, our community of volunteers, our staff past and present, and everyone who has been a part of The Monkey Sanctuary over the past 60 years. Together we have achieved incredible things. None of this would have been possible without your belief in our mission and your commitment to improving the lives of primates. Thank you for standing with us.

We are sure you may have questions and we have compiled a list of FAQs that can be found here: http://www.wildfutures.org/sanctuary-closure-faqs

If you have any further questions, please contact [email protected] and we will endeavour to get back to you as soon as possible. If you currently support one of our monkeys through our adoption scheme, we will be in touch with you personally in the coming weeks with more information.

We remain determined that Wild Futures will continue its important charity work in campaigning and education around primate welfare and conservation, including ending the primate trade. Whilst we feel deep sadness at the closure of the sanctuary, we are filled with hope for the future and the next chapter of Wild Futures, as there is still important work to be done. Although this chapter is coming to an end, our mission is not. We remain determined to protect primates through campaigning, education and conservation, and we hope you will continue to stand with us as we begin this next chapter.

With heartfelt gratitude,
Sarah Hanson
Director, Wild Futures

04/08/2026

July Volunteer Update ☀️

We are very fortunate to be joined by many volunteers throughout the year who kindly donate their time and skills to help The Monkey Sanctuary run smoothly, by supporting our staff to provide the highest levels of care to our rescued monkeys. We are so very grateful to all of the volunteers who spent time with us this month, and we wanted to share the huge contribution they have made 💛

01/08/2026

Apollo and Bobby have been at the sanctuary for 3 years today! 🐒

Apollo and Bobby were rescued from a bird cage in someone’s living room. Bobby suffers with life-limiting physical issues as a result of the poor conditions he was kept in as a pet, but he is now in specialised enclosures with a specific diet catered to his needs. Both Bobby and Apollo have progressed so much in their 3 years at our sanctuary and we are so proud of them 🐵

Happy 3rd rescue anniversary, Apollo and Bobby! ❤

Address

The Monkey Sanctuary
East Looe
PL131NZ

Telephone

+441503262532

Website

http://www.wildfutures.org/

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