LOS ANGELES – At Ape Rescue Mission’s booth, attendees will be able to meet and greet mobile campaigners and supporters of the initiative and ask any questions they may have regarding funding, the core issues for apes in Africa, and any other aspect of the initiative. The Square Card Reader for iPad will be in ARM’s booth to conveniently and securely collect donations through its Fundly page at the Festival. ARM will also be participating in future fundraising nights in eco-friendly restaurants in Los Angeles, such as Veggie Grill, late in 2012.

ARM’s mission is to raise approximately $50,000 by the beginning of 2013 in order to send an experienced animal cruelty investigator to Africa and fight cruelty to great apes. The funds will go directly toward undercover video equipment and living expenses for one person for one year, filling an open position of a well-established West African great ape nonprofit task force. This position urgently needs to be filled and is completely unfunded. ARM’s video (http://vimeo.com/49987800) highlights a mere fraction of the disturbing cruelty inflicted daily on great apes, and explains how ARM is necessary to help put a stop to it.

For decades, chimpanzees and gorillas of Africa’s Congo Basin have been brought to the brink of extinction due to illegal poaching, trafficking and slaughter. Babies are torn from their mothers, and grisly markets of ape heads, hands and other body parts flourish in the black market. If enough funds are raised via ARM for Africa, an experienced animal cruelty investigator will travel to Africa to spend at least one year undercover in the continent’s worst countries for apes, documenting and filming evidence of cruelty and illegal trafficking, and using this evidence for criminal prosecution of all offenders caught on film. The investigator would be filling an open position for a dedicated nonprofit group based in Cameroon that works tirelessly to expose cruelty to great apes and uses evidence of illegal wildlife activity to help enforce anti-trafficking, slaughter and poaching laws. The nonprofit has had numerous successes in the African countries they’ve targeted so far, and is looking to expand to add more people to investigate other countries, replicating already established methods, goals and outcomes.

Ape Rescue Mission will be exhibiting in booth #835 at LA’s Green Festival. For more information, visit http://www.greenfestivals.org/la/updates/.

To get more involved with Ape Rescue Mission and for ARM’s latest news and updates, you can follow them on tumblr (http://aperescuemission.tumblr.com/), facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ape-Rescue-Mission/332982216784235) and twitter (https://twitter.com/aperescue). If you’d like to support the Mission and its efforts, you may donate through ARM’s fundly (https://fundly.com/aperescuemission) and indiegogo pages (http://www.indiegogo.com/aperescuemission).