Chimps Belong Back Home At Primarily Primates Sanctuary
Courant.com
By LEE HALL
Should the law define animals as property or as persons with interests and rights? The question recently came up as Connecticut advocates stepped in to help a Texas sanctuary called Primarily Primates.
Twenty-nine years ago, that sanctuary opened and changed the way humans relate to other primates. Animals who’d been unwilling actors, pets or research specimens were no longer used goods that could disappear into nothingness. The refuge would defend their interest in living on their terms, as much as possible, rather than as instruments or playthings of others. Rudy, the first chimpanzee, arrived in 1983, and today enjoys tasting flowers that abound at the refuge.
A few years ago, Ohio State University decided to divest itself of chimpanzees confined there for cognition experiments. University representatives inspected and were impressed by Primarily Primates, which offered a permanent home.
But the researcher in Ohio regretted losing the primates. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which had been at odds with the Texas refuge, took the researcher’s side. A PETA-funded lawsuit filed in early 2006 attempted to assert control over the animals by challenging the contract that transferred the primates from Ohio State to Primarily Primates. Seven chimpanzees and two monkeys were named as plaintiffs. This wrapped the lawsuit in the clothing of activism; yet perversely, it wasn’t a challenge to an institution where animals were used, but against a refuge.
The court dismissed the suit. But an appeal was filed against Primarily Primates. The sanctuary’s attorney couldn’t keep up pro bono. Darien-based Friends of Animals, believing the attacks were endangering sheltered animals and weakening the sanctuary movement, came forward to ensure the refuge could defend itself.
The deaths of two chimpanzees after their arrival in Texas escalated the dispute. Both had heart conditions, common for captive apes. PETA and its supporters blamed the sanctuary, unfairly and inaccurately, for the deaths.
Primarily Primates was under siege. In late 2006, a judge imposed a temporary receivership on Primarily Primates, to investigate whether there had been “any misappropriated or misapplied charity assets.” Central in this scene was a board member of the activist group Animal Legal Defense Fund, Robert Trimble, who became the receiver’s lawyer. It was déjà vu. In the early 1990s, Primarily Primates had hired a lawyer who was also president of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Steven Mark Wise, to represent the refuge, but Wise soon became an adversary in a battle over the charity’s assets and management. In 2000, a court suspended Wise from practice for being “embroiled in an internal power struggle at PPI, which he tried to use to punish [Primarily Primates officers] for refusing to pay his bill, and to collect his fee.”
The attacks against Primarily Primates intensified during the receivership. The Ohio State chimpanzees were driven to Chimp Haven, which operates under a contract with the National Institutes of Health. In late 2006, Sen. Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) said the apes at Chimp Haven could be useful in a bioterrorism emergency. [Update: “Chimp Haven Is Home”: A Victory?]
Allegations of animal maltreatment had been belied by experienced parties who’d had unfettered access to the sanctuary, including Virginia Landau, a primatologist with the Goodall Institute. Landau — who visits zoos nationwide to improve conditions for captive primates — visited Primarily Primates several times in the year prior to the receivership and said, “The animals look good.”
The Texas attorney general agreed to end the receivership in early 2007, returning the refuge to a restructured board of directors. Priscilla Feral, Friends of Animals’ president, was named to steer refuge policy and administration. Significantly, all parties, including the attorney general’s office, agreed this was in the best interest of the state of Texas, the refuge and its animals. Primarily Primates is currently fulfilling its agreement to finish building the Ohio State chimpanzees’ permanent living spaces. May Chimp Haven now do the right thing and return the Ohio chimpanzees to their private sanctuary, where their status as off-limits to research use or public display is secure.
Primarily Primates also seeks the return of several other animals removed during the upheaval, including chimpanzees Jackson and Emma, who were temporarily removed to an Oregon site named Chimps Inc. This past June, Chimps Inc. filed a complaint in federal court against Primarily Primates to retain “possession” of the pair.
Jackson and Emma spent their formative years at Primarily Primates, and are missed and wanted there. Some say the refuge should forget them, but they’re irreplaceable individuals to whom commitment matters. Lifetime commitment is the hallmark of a sanctuary.
Claims like Chimps Inc.’s assume that animals are “possessions,” or legal property. Today, no human beings are the property of others. What’s the ethical borderline? We humans are not the only ones conscious of our experiences. And a team of 22 stem cell scientists, primatologists, lawyers and philosophers who debated for more than a year the wisdom of inserting human stem cells into monkey brains couldn’t find an ethical dividing line separating humans from other primates, the journal Science reported.
One day, the law will catch up and acknowledge the “personhood” of other primates. That doesn’t mean chimpanzees and monkeys will vote for presidential candidates; it means we’ll be obliged to respect primates’ interests in living in their own habitats rather than in labs, private homes, rental companies, zoos or circuses.
Meanwhile, the sanctuary movement, in which Primarily Primates has a key role, merits the support of the public — and of animal advocates.
ยท Lee Hall is an author of a model case for the personhood of nonhuman primates in the Seton Hall Constitutional Law Journal, and legal director for the Connecticut advocacy group Friends of Animals.
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5 Comments
On December 17, 2007, Melody wrote:
I think animals should be seen as having rights. They do not choose to be in the movies or science experiments. We have to be their voice and help them. These creatures of God should be at the sanctuary, not in some lab being experimented on!
On December 17, 2007, Stephen Rene Tello wrote:
Since 1986 I have been a part of Primarily Primates, and in recent months have taken on the position of Executive Director. Currently, Primarily Primates cares for 65 chimpanzees all of whom were at one time in desperate
need of a permanent home just like the seven Ohio State University chimpanzees who were retired to the San Antonio, Texas sanctuary. Primarily Primates was the only primate sanctuary willing to take on the tremendous task of caring for these apes.
Our caring staff still remembers feeding Sarah her special macaroni treats because she refused to eat her chimpanzee chow. We still remember making and handing out the toys and treats to Keeli, Ivy, Daryl, and Sheeba who
were the most rambunctious of the seven. A huge effort was also made to introduce the youngsters Harper and “Big Emma” to two other youngsters already living at the sanctuary: Jackson and “Little Emma.”
All of these incredible individuals were our residents at the sanctuary, and they’re never out of our minds. The writer Lee Hall has captured the legal and ethical dispute of this lawsuit very clearly. Individuals like Lee make it possible for all of us at Primarily Primates to wake up every morning and face the never ending daily tasks of caring for the 400 animal residents who depend on public support and funds for their care. I applaud my staff for bearing all the trials and tribulations of life at the sanctuary.
It is time for our seven OSU chimpanzees friends (and Little Emma and Jackson) to come home to their brand new and incredible naturalistic habitats — completed with the support of Friends of Animals which has positively changed the vision and future of Primarily Primates.
While the lawsuit continues to proceed, we hope at some point all those human apes who truly care for these special chimpanzees will reconcile their differences and perhaps put all this wasted negative energy and resources into support for the lifetime care of these great apes. We miss you Harper, Big Emma, Daryl, Ivy, Sheeba, Sarah, Jackson and you, Little Emma, until you and the other animals are back home.
Stephen Rene Tello, Executive Director, Primarily Primates, Inc.
www.primarilyprimates.org
On December 20, 2007, Les wrote:
Check out today’s news!!
This ends the controversy — The OSU chimpanzees are home at Chimp Haven!
Chimpanzees retired to Chimp Haven could not be removed from the Keithville facility for medical research thanks to a bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Jim McCrery and U.S. Sen. Richard Burr.
The bill, titled the Chimp Haven is Home Act, deletes a provision in the law allowing chimpanzees to be removed from the sanctuary for further research.
The bill now awaits President Bush’s signature to become law.
“This legislation removes the ‘return to medical research’ clause from the law and will give everyone involved with Chimp Haven peace of mind because the chimpanzees will be able to grow old peacefully in their new home, and they cannot be removed for research purposes,” McCrery says in a release.
“The legislation will not adversely affect human health research, as these chimpanzees were deemed unfit for further experimentation.”
McCrery tried to introduce a similar bill, House Resolution 5798, in 2006. That measure passed the House of Representatives by voice vote in the final week of the session but didn’t clear the Senate before Congress adjourned.
Based on the intensive criteria needed, staff members at Chimp Haven have previously stated it would be highly unlikely for any chimp to ever be called back into research by the Chimp Act, but the clause has been a continuing point of controversy for the sanctuary that opened in 2005.
“The chimpanzees at Chimp Haven have spent their lives in research laboratories helping to improve the lives of all Americans,” McCrery said. “Many of our discoveries in space and medicine are due to chimpanzees. I am proud to help modify the existing law to ensure chimpanzees at Chimp Haven will spend their final years happily.”
Enacted in 2000, the Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Maintenance, and Protection Act — known as the CHIMP Act — established the National Chimpanzee Sanctuary System for chimpanzees no longer needed for research. The sanctuary system is operated by Chimp Haven in a public-private partnership.
Chimp Haven is responsible for matching 25 percent of the federal funding it receives each year. The removal provision in the 2000 law has made fundraising difficult for Chimp Haven.
On December 20, 2007, Lee Hall of Friends of Animals wrote:
The bill is still in the process of being enrolled in the Senate; it has not yet gone to Bush. Should Bush sign this, the law will not change the reality that the National Institutes of Health (read: protocols that involve vivisection of nonhuman great apes) are being subsidized by charity donations. “Chimp Haven is responsible for matching 25 percent of the federal funding it receives each year.” In other words, you have charity-style fundraising to offset what our government has to pay for the high cost of keeping apes through the end of their lives. This helps the national system of ape research stay afloat, when it should instead be abolished. What the animal rights community should support is charity funds going to private refuges, not an institution that has a contract to provide a service to the same entity which used these chimpanzees so they can whitewash what they do.
On December 7, 2010, Mike Gooch wrote:
Perhaps when animals are granted “rights” as humans then we can outlaw abortion again. Right? I pray that we can regardless.