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Negra discovers her reflection. © Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest |
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by Rebecca Simmons
Imagine being locked in a basement and subjected to biomedical research for your entire life. Now imagine being let out—and seeing the sky for the first time.
That's what happened to one male and six female chimpanzees who were moved from a research laboratory to the non-profit Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in Cle Elum, Washington on June 13.
Annie, Foxie, Jamie, Jody, Missy, Negra and Burrito, who range in age from 25 to 35, had been living at Buckshire Corporation in Perkasie, Penn., a private laboratory and quarantine facility licensed to provide animals for research. According to reports, the chimpanzees, five of whom are believed to have been born at the facility, lived in small enclosures in a windowless basement and were used in hepatitis B vaccine trials and for breeding.
Their new home is a 18,000-cubic-foot, 15-foot tall chimp house that overlooks 26 acres and includes a new 20- by 30-foot outdoor play area. The chimpanzees will not be used for research again. The new facility will likely be their home for the rest of their lives.
Buckshire, which supplies many species of primates for research, will no longer house chimpanzees. It is the sixth chimpanzee lab to close since 1995, further proof that the use of chimpanzees in research is on the decline.
This trend is attributed to increasing ethical concerns, the high financial costs of keeping chimpanzees in laboratories, and the realization that chimpanzees are poor research models for human diseases like HIV/AIDS. Over the past several years, hundreds of federally and privately owned chimpanzees have been permanently retired.
The Great Ape Protection Act, introduced in April 2008, seeks to stop invasive research and testing on all of the approximately 1,200 chimpanzees living in American laboratories, retire to sanctuary the nearly 600 of these animals who are owned by the federal government, and prohibit the breeding of any more chimpanzees for invasive research purposes.
