Who are we?
Ronald Troostwijk
MPC was founded by Hanneke van Ormondt, Rikkert Reijnen and Els van Lavieren in 2005. The founders were working at AAP, Sanctuary for exotic animals at the time and decided to start this foundation after seeing many infant Barbary macaques being offered for shelter at AAP. According to the founders, not enough was done to stop this illegal trade.
Fortunately, AAP realised that something had to be done and sent Els van Lavieren to Morocco to first do her thesis for the Oxford Brookes University on the illegal trade in Barbary macaques, to find out the logistics and the specifics of the trade, and secondly for 8 months to do field work in the Middle Atlas mountains to find out the status of the last remaining wild population. Rikkert became the coordinator for the Barbary macaque campaign for AAP. The founders decided to leave MPC dormant, until the need was there to restart the foundation.
This moment has come. Els van Lavieren has worked for and with many organisations over the past 4 years on Barbary macaque conservation: IUCN, AAP, WWF, SSN, Institut Scientifique in Rabat, Le Haut Commissariat aux Eaux et Forets, Fomanef, AESVT etc. These organisations focus on more species than only the Barbary macaque and thus unfortunately funding does not last forever. For this reason, MPC has been re-established with a new board, with Els van Lavieren as the director, Rikkert Reijnen on the board and Hanneke van Ormondt as an advisor and right hand for the foundation.
We are:
Rikkert Reijnen- Chairman - currently working at IFAW Netherlands and in the past has worked for AAP, Sanctuary for exotic animals and has been involved in Barbary macaque conservation actions for years for AAP.
Boris Janssen- Secretary -who has worked at AAP, Sanctuary for exotic animals for years in the human resource dept and as assistant director and worked for War Child (currently in the fundraising board) and currently has his own clothing distribution company in Amsterdam.
Hicham Zemmouri - Treasurer - who currently works for Shell in the financial world and is originally Moroccan
Els van Lavieren - Director -has a BSc in Wildlife Management and and MSc in Primate conservation. She worked at AAP, Sanctuary for exotic animals for 6 years as head of the animal care department, and has been working fully on Barbary macaque conservation in Morocco since 2004, on many different aspects: field research on both the illegal trade and the wild population, educational projects, training of customs officers, CITES implementation and uplisting Appendix, organisations of seminars, lobbying, publications, media etc.
Hanneke van Ormondt - Founder, advisor and right hand of MPC - is a biologist who has worked at AAP, sanctuary for exotic animals with all primates, including the creation of the special care unit for infected chimpanzees. Hanneke has done field work with primates in Sumatra, worked for the Monkey Sanctuary in Cornwall, and at CARE in South Africa with baboons. She is currently working for Wakker Dier Foundation that aims at putting a halt to the bio industry and fights for the welfare of farm animals.
Prof. Hans de Iongh - Advisor - reknown conservation biologist and currently working at CML in Leiden as Associate professor
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