Cages to Care: Your Advocacy Counts
Our rescue program takes abused and abandoned chimpanzees from lab cages and places them in a nurturing, dignified environment that offers them a secure and meaningful habitat in which to spend the rest of their lives. Our goals include educating others so breeding chimpanzees in captivity stops, chimps are no longer kept as pets and the use of chimps in the entertainment industry ceases. It is our wish that someday all cages will stay empty forever.
New Homes for our Friends Rescued from the Laboratory
Construction is now complete on 11 additional three-acre islands, each linked to a housing and
care center by a land bridge. The natural environment gives the chimpanzees a comfortable home in which to socialize
and rebuild confidence shattered by years spent isolated in small cages. Once our friends settle into their new island refuge, they are in permanent retirement and never have to worry about their future.
Now it is time to move the chimpanzees from New Mexico to their new outdoor homes in Florida, and the retirement
they so richly deserve.
Click here to read about The Great Chimpanzee Migration.
Educational Center
Our Observational Learning Center will cut through
the fog of misunderstanding about this noble, endangered
species that is our closest genetic cousin, sharing 98.6
percent genetic makeup with humans. Visitors will gain
close insight into the social structure that chimpanzees
create for themselves when allowed to live free of harm’s
way. With a webcam system, people will be able to
watch the chimps in their habitat without intruding on
their lives or disrupting their environment.
The Center will take individuals on a journey
through the chimpanzees’ life in Africa, their dangers
from the bush meat trade and their shrinking resources,
to the impact of the pet and entertainment industry and
their use in research. Finally, visitors will learn how
Save the Chimps is placing them back where they started
- in as natural a habitat as possible.
Interactive video displays will be available on a variety of subjects relating to chimpanzee daily life, as well
as profiles of the chimpanzees on each of the islands
in Florida.
Space Chimp Display
Included in the Educational Center will be a special
tribute to the Space Chimps. In the 1950’s, the Air Force
established a colony of baby chimpanzees captured from
the forests of Africa to serve in the U.S. space program.
These chimpanzees were used to test the effects of space
travel on humans. But while Americans took their human
astronaut heroes to heart, the chimps, who were NASA
pioneers, were consigned to languish in cages. After
showing the “right stuff” for NASA, the chimpanzees became biomedical research subjects for the next 30 years.
A generation of chimpanzee babies grew up in
lab cages and then had babies of their own. In 1997, the
Air Force announced it was leaving the chimpanzee re
search business, and Save the Chimps won a legal battle
and rescued 21 of these chimpanzees who now reside at
the sanctuary. The display will trace the chimpanzees’
capture from the forests in Africa, their role to test the
effects of space travel on humans, and their journey from
space pioneers to research subjects. Artifacts will include
a full-sized mock up of a Mercury space capsule. The
NASA chimps and their descendants rescued by Save the
Chimps will be profiled.
Who We Are
The Chimpanzee Collaboratory is a unique assemblage of attorneys, scientists and public policy experts working together to improve the welfare and upgrade the legal status of great apes. Save the Chimps is one of the initial members of the Collaboratory. The other members are Animal Legal Defense Fund, Friends of Washoe, Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights, Doris Day Animal League, Jane Goodall Institute, Performing Animal Welfare Society and Wildlife Advocacy Project. The Chimpanzee Collaboratory, which acts as a think-tank, got underway at the end of 2000, when the prestigious Glaser Foundation of Seattle, Washington announced the funding of this landmark collaborative project.
Our Mission
The mission of the Chimpanzee Collaboratory is: To make significant and measurable progress in protecting the lives and establishing the legal rights of chimpanzees.
The State of Chimpanzees Today
Chimpanzees and other great apes are disappearing from their natural habitats in Africa and Asia at an alarming and unprecedented rate. Several factors are responsible for the decline of these species, the most serious being deforestation, the bushmeat trade, and capture for use as research subjects and pets. Around the world thousands of chimpanzees are living in captivity in research laboratories, zoos, entertainment facilities and as pets in peoples' homes. A small number of fortunate animals have been retired to sanctuaries.
Chimpanzees are highly intelligent and sensitive animals, capable of complex thoughts and actions. With emotions similar to those we call joy, anger, grief, sorrow, pleasure, boredom and depression, these remarkable animals are mentally and physiologically similar to humans. Ironically, because of these similarities, chimpanzees are used and abused by humans in the name of science, entertainment and education. Conveniently, however, they are seen by society to be just different enough that they have been deprived of the most basic legal rights.
To this end, Save the Chimps is a founding member of the Chimpanzee Collaboratory.
Visit the Chimpanzee Collaboratory Website
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