What's New? News Articles Archives Media Center Newsletters Videos A R T I C L E S From Indian River Magazine March/April 2007 www.IRMAzine.com Born To Be Wild by GREGORY ENNS, photos by PORFIRIO SOLORZANO Like Moses in the bullrush, Thoto peers over cattails on the banks of a canal west of Fort Pierce and greets his liberator. He stands erect as if to give visitors a better view. The liberator is Carole Noon, a sun-bleached woman driving a golf cart around the 150-acre compound she helped build for Thoto and 92 other chimpanzees now living at the Save the Chimps Sanctuary. Before being released into the Fort Pierce sanctuary in 2006, Thoto lived for years in a cell at a research laboratory in New Mexico. "When I found him he was in a cage about 10 feet by 6 feet," Noon says. On the first night of his release onto one of the 11-acre peninsulas at the sanctuary, Thoto remained outside, soaking in the stars and the moon. For the first time in years, he enjoyed an uncaged night of sleep. "He didn't come in until the next morning." Noon dismisses the notion that she is liberator to Thoto and the other chimps, or that she has been able to restore them to their natural freedom. She simply says she is trying to improve their lives by putting them in as natural a habitat as possible. Although the sanctuary subsists on public and corporate donations, it is not open to the public. "I can't say to you I've rescued them from exploitation," says Noon, 56. They've been used all their lives and now they're retired. To put them on display would be further exploitation. Most people agree with that." In keeping with the mission of Save the Chimps, the animals won't be used for future research. "Our mission is to provide them with as good a life as possible," she says. The chimpanzees cannot be reintroduced into the wilds of Africa for several reasons. "There's no wild left and they're not equipped to fend for themselves," Noon says.  The chimps now living in the wild live in communities and would not accept [domestic] chimps because they're outsiders." So the sanctuary along the Header Canal off Okeechobee Road is the next best thing. Situated in a former citrus grove, the sanctuary looks like a giant children's playground, with large wooden platforms and jungle gyms built on a series of peninsulas. Three sides are surrounded by water - chimps don't swim - and the fourth leads to a concrete building. In all, the complex has 12 peninsulas, each with its own building. The buildings house cages used for the re-socialization process and for the protection of human caregivers at feeding time. Of all the notions that Noon tries to dispel about chimpanzees, one of the biggest is the Hollywood image that they are cuddly animals. Most of the chimps on television and in the movies, she says, are young chimps that can be easily handled. "Adult chimps are so much stronger than us that even if they gave you a hug or tickled you it would hurt," Noon says. "They're just wild animals with incredible strength that the average person can't even fathom." Caregivers at the sanctuary are forbidden to make hand contact with the chimps or to approach them without protective caging between them, although they are permitted to use small pieces of garden hose to scratch them. Twenty-five people work at the sanctuary, several of whom have worked with chimps before. Three of the employees worked at the former lab in New Mexico and moved with the chimps as they relocated. "They're just like us," says Cassidy Lemke, 23, one of the New Mexico workers who moved with a group of chimps about nine months ago. "They have the same emotions and feelings. One of the biggest differences is that chimps are way more forgiving than we are." Many of the chimps at the sanctuary were used in surgical experiments or injected with disease when they were research animals in New Mexico. Noon says records don't reveal exactly what experiments they were subjected to, but she says all the chimps have been tested and none has HIV. Despite the years of prodding and poking from humans, the chimps are remarkably accepting of humans. "They've been subjected to biomedical research but still build relationships with humans," says Jackie Smith, 28, another sanctuary worker. Like humans, Noon says chimpanzees can be easily identified by sight and mannerism. Noon, for example, can quickly tell which chimps are cavorting on the peninsulas, even though she is a hundred yards away. "You can tell who a human is across a parking lot, can't you?" she asks. "They each look different. They even have individual fingerprints like us." The chimps at the sanctuary live in separate groups of about 25, with no contact between groups. "You put them in cages next to each other to see if they like each other. If they play with each other and groom each other, you have a good idea that it's going to work out. It's an incredibly long process." Noon, an anthropologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Florida, did her dissertation on the re-socialization of chimpanzees. She was an undergraduate student at Florida Atlantic University when she heard Dr. Jane Goodall give a lecture about chimps. Noon was inspired to study them at zoos, and later went to graduate school and studied primatology. Goodall funded Noon's dissertation research at a wildlife orphanage in Zambia, where Noon worked with chimps that had been removed from their families in the wild. Noon worked with the chimps for three years, reintroducing them in new family groups in 14-acre enclosures. Noon was living in Boynton Beach when she became a stateside activist for chimps. She helped found Save the Chimps in 1997 after the Air Force announced it was stopping chimpanzee research. Noon initially applied for custody of the chimps but was denied. Later, she sued the Air Force on behalf of the chimpanzees and won custody of 21 chimps. The Air Force chimps were part of a colony of baby chimpanzees and their descendants that had been captured from the forests of Africa in the 1950s to serve in the U.S. space program. After founding Save the Chimps, Noon in the late 1990s began scouting places to start a sanctuary and found a receptive audience with the St. Lucie County Commission. With seed money from the Arcus Foundation of Michigan, she was able to buy the land for the Fort Pierce sanctuary and begin building, with the first chimps arriving in Fort Pierce in December 2001. A few months later Noon got a call from Dr. Frederick Coulston, a noted infectious disease researcher who had an additional 266 chimps at his lab in Almogordo, N.M. Coulston's lab was on the verge of bankruptcy and had lost government funding after several chimp deaths. The phone call resulted in Save the Chimps buying the lab and equipment for $3.7 million. "He donated the chimps to Save the Chimps," Noon says. "I would never buy chimpanzees." I didn't expect to become the largest chimpanzee sanctuary in the world overnight." Six of the peninsulas at the Fort Pierce sanctuary are now occupied and Noon plans to have the remaining 186 chimps in New Mexico moved by the end of 2008. The cost of feeding and caring for the chimps is about $10,000 a year each and the annual cost of running the sanctuary is about $3 million. Besides the Arcus Foundation, the $15 million Fort Pierce facility was funded through donations from various animal rights groups. But the sanctuary also depends on small donations from the public to meet its budget. Noon says she has taken in a few performing chimpanzees, though she will not accept them into the sanctuary if the owners intend to replace them with a younger chimps. She hopes to expand education efforts by creating an off-site center where people can watch the chimps via closed-circuit television. Though Save the Chimps does not endorse captive breeding of chimpanzees, three births occurred at the sanctuary - all because of failed vasectomies. The pregnancies required second vasectomies for the five males in the group in which the births occurred. The chimps, which eat fruits, grains and vegetables, are fed three meals a day. A recent day's menu included eggplant, bananas, celery, popcorn, pasta and nature bars. The sanctuary's oldest chimps - in their mid-40s - are expected to live just a few more years. With the best of care, chimps usually have a life expectancy in their 50s. "These guys came from s---, so you do the math," Noon says. Noon and the sanctuary have been featured in everything from People magazine to the New York Times Sunday magazine. The sanctuary's biggest exposure came last year in a feature on the PBS show, "Nature." Noon makes no apologies for her focus on improving the lives of chimpanzees rather than improving those of humans. She believes she is helping to restore part of humanity. "Humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than gorillas, so they are our next of kin," she says. "Look at the price these particular chimps have paid over the years. I think that in the big picture and humanity's sense of justice, it's important that somebody does something and gives these chimps what they deserve." For Noon, who lives in a small house on the sanctuary grounds, rewards come a few fleeting moments at a time. She is especially taken with the story of Gromek, the chimp appearing on the cover of this issue of Indian River. He was one of the Air Force chimps caught in Africa during the 1950s and had lived in a concrete block cell since the age of 2. When he first arrived at the sanctuary, well into his 40s, instead of timidly exploring the outside he bolted out of the building, feeling grass for the first time under his feet. A few weeks later, in the middle of the night, Noon heard pounding. There, she saw Gromek on a platform under the night sky. "He was displaying," she says. "I said to myself, 'What is he doing out there?' And then I thought: He's announcing himself to the world. He's announcing, 'I'm here.' " Go to www.IRMAzine.com to see more on Save the Chimps.   Save the Chimps is a 501 (c)(3) charitable organization and all contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law ©2004 - Present savethechimps.org. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Contact Us