Sanctuary For 'Retired' Lab Chimps Being Built In Louisiana

by Sherry Morse

In late November, construction began in Shreveport, Louisiana on Chimp Haven, a $29 million federally financed project to house the growing surplus of research chimpanzees in the United States.

Chimp Haven will be the first sanctuary for retired research chimps in the United States to be funded by public and private dollars.

The National Center for Research Resources will provide about $19 million to operate the facility for the first ten years that it is open, as well as about $10 million in grants to help pay for construction costs.

About 200 chimps will initially make their home at the sanctuary once it opens, with as many as 900 chimps eventually living there.

Many of the chimps who will live at Chimp Haven represent a surplus resulting from aggressive breeding of the animals in the 1980s when scientists thought they might hold the key to curing AIDS.

Of the 1600 chimps currently in federal research labs, only a few of the oldest were born in the wild. These chimps will most likely be the ones to show the captive-born chimps how to build nests and find food in a natural setting.

For almost ten years Linda Brent, a protégé of Jane Goodall, and a group of other animal advocates searched for a place where these chimps would no longer be kept in small cages and could live out their lives in a more natural setting.

In 1998, a Shreveport developer heard about the search and helped persuade Caddo Parish officials to donate 200 acres of forest for Chimp Haven.

Even though the major construction has just started, the official ground breaking at the sanctuary took place in May of this year with a scale model of the proposed finished park on view for attendees.

The sanctuary will include indoor enclosures where the animals can be cared for, as well as woods where the chimps can live off the land in a semi-wild setting.

The grounds will be surrounded by a twenty-foot concrete wall and a wide moat, to prevent the chimps from breaking out. Chimps do not swim, and are wary of water.

Brent, who is the president of Chimp Haven, said she is looking forward to seeing the chimps in a natural setting, "learning how to be chimps again."

The sanctuary will also be open to the public for educational tours.

© 2003 Animal News Center, Inc.