All chimps go to haven: primates from NM labs will move to sanctuary

Retired lab chimpanzees housed in a New Mexico facility are headed for greener pastures in an animal sanctuary in Louisiana next spring, the National Institutes of Health said.

The primates are being relocated to Chimp Haven, a federally funded 200-acre forested sanctuary in Keithville, Louisiana, where they’ll be joining nearly 300 other chimpanzees, many of whom came from labs. The chimps are expected to be transferred in early 2025, the NIH confirmed to The Associated Press.

The remaining 23 elderly chimpanzees at Alamogordo Primate Facility (APF) at Holloman Air Force Base were used for biomedical experiments by the National Institutes of Health and their fates have been in limbo for much of their lives.

In 2000, Congress passed the CHIMP Act that mandated that all retired lab chimps be moved to sanctuaries. It’s been nearly 25 years since that law was enacted, and the news that chimps are being relocated is a move some animal advocates “never thought would come,” said Gene Grant, who directs policy surrounding animals in science for the advocacy group Animal Protection New Mexico.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., also applauded the NIH after the announcement.

“This long overdue step will ensure that these animals can live out the remainder of their lives with dignity and will end a long, painful, and expensive chapter in New Mexico’s history on this issue,” Stansbury said in a statement Friday.

The NIH announced in 2015 that it had retired all of its research chimpanzees and was committed to relocating them to Chimp Haven.

As the NIH relocated retired animals across the country, many chimps were left behind at the Alamogordo Primate Facility due to poor health conditions, according to a statement from the NIH in 2019. NIH officials were concerned that they were too ill to travel.

Grant said that while chimps, especially those suffering medical conditions, must be handled with the utmost care, none have died in transit to the sanctuary. The greater threat, Grant said, is the NIH wasting precious time in moving the animals.

Since 2019, when the NIH announced it would not relocate its animals, reports indicate that nearly half of the population at the Alamogordo facility has died. In 2019, there were 44 primates, and as of October, there are 23.

Causes of death were not listed in the reports, but many of the animals were elderly and in poor health, according to previous statements by the NIH.

“The agency’s foot-dragging condemned these incredible animals — who had endured a lifetime of suffering — to spend their final years and days in a sterile laboratory with barren outdoor enclosures,” Kitty Block, the CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, said in a statement Friday.

NIH officials did not return multiple calls for comment from the Journal on Friday.

The NIH told The New York Times that the decision to relocate the chimps came after finding out that a majority of their caretakers were planning to retire by this summer.

The Humane Society points toward a 2022 lawsuit it filed, alongside Animal Protection New Mexico, that found the NIH in violation of the CHIMP Act by failing to relocate the primates.

Beyond quality of life concerns, Grant argues that operating the APF was a “fantastic-level” waste of taxpayer money.

According to a NIH report from October, the daily cost for housing a chimp at APF is three times as expensive as caring for them at the sanctuary.

It costs $290 per day to house a chimp at APF, while the daily cost at Chimp Haven is $76. The federal government spent $1.93 million to maintain APF this year, according to the report.

“Paying three times the money for a chimp to have substandard care,” Grant said. “It was just unacceptable.”

Grant urged the federal government to act quickly to move chimpanzees, as many don’t have long to live. The chimps are aged 34 to 62, the latter of which is on the tail end of the primates’ expected lifespan in captivity.

Despite the losses, Grant sees the announcement as fulfilling a decades-long promise to man’s closest relative.

“We’re so grateful they’re actually going to get to live out their (remaining) years in the promise that we promised them,” Grant said.