Tony Smith is an Advisory Board member of the Fauna Foundation, a retirement sanctuary for former biomedical research chimpanzees. He has visited the chimpanzees, now at Fauna, in the laboratory in which they were incarcerated (LEMSIP); the feelings that he encountered during this visit had a profound effect on him. He is now committed to the care of captive chimpanzees and plans to spend his life working for the rights of non-human animals. Tony works to promote international understanding of the importance of the non-human apes right to life, liberty, and freedom from torture.

He is also a dear friend of fourteen of the world's leading experts in the problems faced by chimpanzees who have endured invasive research, those being the fourteen at the Fauna Foundation. They are considered a very important part of his extended family. Tony is married to Fauna Trustee Dawna Grow and is father to Maggie, the Fauna Foundation's youngest volunteer.

Tony is also co-founder of Great Ape Standing and Personhood (GRASP), an organization formed to promote recognition of personhood and legal rights for great apes.