Saving The Chimps
By Marie Speed
Jun 30, 2009 - 04:27 PM
In the there-really-are-angels category, last week I got to visit the Save the Chimps sanctuary in Port St. Lucie, a magical preserve that is the largest of its kind—dedicated to rescuing chimps that have been used for lab experiments, air travel, entertainment or for family pets.
Save the Chimps starts with their stories. Jaybee, estimated to be 30 years old, who spent 20 years in a five by five foot cage—when he wasn’t being subjected to invasive lab experiments. Or Tapioca or Cody or Chelsea or Carlos—many who were incarcerated for decades at the Coulston Foundation in New Mexico, a biomedical lab “with the worst record of primate care in the history of the Animal Welfare Act,” according to Save The Chimps.
Enter Dr. Carole Noon, the UF anthropologist who had a vision. Trained at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia, Noon had a mission: to rescue chimps used by the Air Force and by the biomedical industry for research so they could live out their lives in safety and freedom. She bought 200 acres near Port St. Lucie where she has built 12 islands for the chimps, complete with hammocks and swings and boardwalks—but no cages. And with vast expanses of grass—something some of the chimps have never seen in their lives.
Eventually, when the ”great chimp migration” is complete and all the New Mexico animals are successfully relocated to this sanctuary, there will be roughly 300 chimps in peaceful retirement. I saw it. I heard it. I watched them. They were loud and big and boisterous and active. They were under a blue, blue sky; they were together, in families, for the first time in their long isolated lives.
Sadly, Dr. Carol Noon died this May of pancreatic cancer, having seen only 159 of her 280 chimps transferred to her sanctuary. But I know her work will be completed because she has done something so extraordinary, so big, so full of humanity that it must be seen through. It’s the kind of life’s work that few people can lay claim to—and it’s here, in our own backyard.
Although the public cannot visit the sanctuary, you can help honor its mission. Check out savethechimps.org and rediscover a few people, who are doing something good, something from the heart. It’s the kind of news we need these days.
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