Member News

Senators Want Chimps Moved to Sanctuary

Senators Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall of New Mexico want the National Institutes of Health to reconsider a decision to keep more than 40 chimpanzees at a facility at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo.

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World’s Largest Chimpanzee Sanctuary Closer to San Antonio Than You Think

Just across the border into Louisiana, about a six-hour drive from the Alamo City, and you’ll find Chimp Haven in the town of Keithville. At 200 acres, it claims the title as biggest chimpanzee sanctuary in the world.

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Opinion: How We Treat Old Chimpanzees — and What That Says About Us

The National Institutes of Health announced that it will be breaking its promise to move 44 chimpanzees currently being held in a biomedical facility in New Mexico to Chimp Haven, a sanctuary in Louisiana. Francis Collins, the head of NIH, said a review panel had determined that these chimpanzees are either too old or too sick to relocate safely. This is bad news for the chimpanzees. It also reflects a troubling reality about all research on nonhuman subjects.

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Some Lab Chimps May Never Retire to a Sanctuary

In 2015, the National Institutes of Health decided to retire all the chimpanzees it owned. Since then, animal welfare groups have been pushing for quicker action, even as some of the facilities that once conducted experiments have urged caution, arguing that some chimps are too old and sick to be moved. In October 2019, the NIH announced that an independent panel of veterinarians had determined that the 44 chimpanzees remaining at the Alamogordo Primate Facility, or APF, in New Mexico were too ill to move, as the facility had contended. Rana Smith, president of Chimp Haven, expressed disappointment at the decision. “We respect the medical opinions of the veterinary panel,” she wrote in an email. However, she said, “we firmly believe that sanctuary life is the best place for chimpanzees.”

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NIH: Aging Chimps to Stay in NM

The National Institutes of Health said 44 aging chimpanzees are too fragile to be moved from the Alamogordo Primate Facility to a sanctuary in Louisiana. Instead, they will spend the rest of their lives at the facility in southeastern New Mexico, the NIH announced Thursday.

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Some of NIH’s Chimpanzees Will Not Retire to a Sanctuary as Planned

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) will not be retiring all of its chimpanzees to Chimp Haven, as it originally pledged to do. Nearly four dozen chimps at a biomedical primate facility in New Mexico will remain there because they are too old and sick to move, he said, although scientific studies of them have ended.

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Chimp Haven Reaches Milestone with Expansion Project

Chimp Haven has reached a milestone as it makes room for former research chimpanzees still awaiting sanctuary retirement.

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Chimp Haven Continues to Expand

Chimp Haven has reached an exciting milestone as it makes room for former research chimpanzees still awaiting sanctuary retirement.

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A Safe Place to Land

Retired research chimps find sanctuary in Morganton, Georgia.

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Former Nicotine Research Monkeys Now at Primate Sanctuary

The nicotine addiction study by the FDA started in 2014, but was suspended last year after the agency learned four research monkeys had died.

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Monkeys Join Gainesville Sanctuary After Lives in the Lab

About two dozen squirrel monkeys that have spent their lives in cages as test subjects in nicotine addiction research are now away from the lab and transitioning to the open skies at Gainesville’s Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary.

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Jane Goodall Helps Rescue 26 Squirrel Monkeys From Lab Testing

Earlier this year, primatologist Jane Goodall helped facilitate the rescue of 26 squirrel monkeys from US Food and Drug Administration testing.

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