A Costa Rican animal rescue center invited singer Justin Bieber to visit it, learn the importance of letting wild animals live free and stop buying monkeys.
Vanessa Lizano, who heads the Rescue Center in Tilaran, in northern Costa Rica, told MLM on Thursday that she does not know if Bieber will accept her invitation, or even acknowledge it, but she said that the aim is to “educate” the artist.
“What concerns me is that he has millions of fans who may imitate him and think that having a monkey is cool, as he believes,” Lizano said.
She said that the black market for wild animals is a worldwide problem and famous artists such as Bieber could help to fight it if they are educated on conservation and environmental awareness.
“We’d like to educate the boy so that instead of buying monkeys he helps to rehabilitate them,” Lizano said.
The Rescue Center initiative comes several days after remarks made by Bieber became public in which he said that he would like to have a pet monkey again, as he did in 2013, when he owned a capuchin monkey.
The Tilaran Rescue Center posted a communique on its Web site in which it offers a free educational trip to the Canadian singer with the aim of informing him of the risks of having a monkey as a pet.
The communique says that if Bieber shelves his idea of buying monkeys, the Rescue Center will name an animal rehabilitation center after the artist.
Capuchin or whitefaced monkeys suffer trauma when they are separated from their mothers and, as a result, they become aggressive when they are adults in captivity, according to information from the center.
