The guidelines for The Animal Welfare (Primate Licenses) (England) Regulations (2024) have now been released. These regulations are due to come in to force on 6th April 2026, giving existing owners the chance to amend their facilities in order to comply with the new regulations.
After this date, it will be a criminal offence to privately own any primate without this license.
These regulations are to work alongside the existing Dangerous Wild Animal (DWA) license, meaning that people who keep primates as pets will need to have both a DWA license and a primate license with their local authority (unless they are a species that are not covered by the DWA license such as callitrichids).
As the DWA license does not apply to all species of primate, but the new primate license does, this now means that many species, including marmosets and tamarins, will finally be back under some form of regulation since they were delisted in 2007. Until this point, there was no way of monitoring the welfare of these species in the UK primate pet trade, as anyone could own one without a license.
These new regulations are a huge step towards ensuring that so many primates in the UK don’t go unnoticed and unregulated. Needless suffering has been caused because of this. Monkeys kept in tiny, barren cages with no access to sunlight. Some are even denied access to fresh drinking water. These are just some of the cases that Wild Futures has rescued primates from in the past few years.
The new license provides information for license holders on how to provide a basic level of care for their primates, including providing them with a balanced diet, access to both indoor and outdoor enclosures, an appropriate social environment, and not removing them from their enclosures to be handled. Sadly, we often rescue primates from situations where even these fundamental needs are not met. 87% of our rescued marmosets never had access outside, and many of our rescued monkeys were fed sweets and chocolate causing some of them to develop diseases such as diabetes.
License holders must also be able to prove that they are knowledgeable about primate behaviour which is an encouraging addition that will hopefully ensure a better understanding of primate welfare overall.
This new system is not the full ban on keeping primates as pets that we have been fighting for for the past 25 years, but we are optimistic that so much unnecessary suffering and neglect will hopefully come to an end under these new regulations.
The question that now remains is – how will these new regulations be governed? The current DWA license has a high rate of non-compliance, so how does this new scheme plan to combat this and ensure that all primates will definitely be covered by the new license?
Furthermore, what are the implications for primates who are currently kept as pets, but their owners can’t or won’t meet the requirements of the new regulations? Will charities like ours, who receive no government funding and rely solely on donations, be able to handle the influx of abandoned primates?
Our work is critical now more than ever.
If you are able to support our charity, please donate here.
If you would like a more in-depth look at the guidelines, follow the link below to read them on the government’s website.
