Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Keep the pressure on – help 202 chimpanzees

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If you haven’t already, please call and write Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius today and urge her to halt the transfer of 202 chimpanzees from the Alamogordo Primate Facility (APF) to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in Texas.

You can send an electronic letter through the Humane Society of the United States and you can call the office of Health and Human Services at these numbers: 301-435-0888 or 202-205-5445 or 877-696-6775 (option #6 on the 877 number may put you in touch with a live person).

These chimpanzees should be allowed to permanently retire, not be subjected to more research. Retiring the chimpanzees is not only the ethical thing to do, it will also save taxpayer money, something we all have a right to speak out about. Currently, the chimpanzees are being warehoused at APF and have not been used in research for at least nine years.

Read our July 16th blog post about this issue for more information and read New Mexico governor Bill Richardson’s press release supporting halting the transfer of the APF chimpanzees.

Also, please see the statement from Save the Chimps released two days ago. It includes a link to a pdf which summarizes the history of chimpanzees in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

The announcement about the plan to transfer the chimpanzees was made well after the decision had been made.  We must speak up now and keep the pressure on for the sake of the 202 individuals and their future.

Call the NIH today to help the APF chimpanzees

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Wayne Pacelle, President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, just posted a blog entry about the 202 chimpanzees who are slated to be moved from the Alamogordo Primate Facility (APF) to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR).

Wayne expresses it well, “…the time is past for subjecting chimps to painful and unnecessary research, and much of the world is ahead of us in recognizing this fact.”

Hopefully, all of you emailed Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius after reading our blog post yesterday.

Now there’s something else you can do – call the Health and Human Services switchboard at 877-696-6775 and ask them to halt the transfer of these 202 chimpanzees and permanently retire them from research.

(When I called this number a moment ago, I got a series of menu options. I chose to leave a message for the Secretary of Health and Human Services at 202-205-5445. Perhaps during business hours there are humans who answer the phones. Let us know how your phone calls go.)

The chimpanzees cannot speak for themselves. Please speak on their behalf.

Update on Alamogordo chimpanzees

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Please see our July 16th post, Chimpanzees to be moved for research, for the background information on this story.

Fifteen chimpanzees have already been moved from the Alamogordo Primate Facility (APF) to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in Texas, but we cannot give up. The chimpanzees need us to speak out for them.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has issued a press release asking the NIH to permanently retire all of the APF chimpanzees, return the 15 chimpanzees that have already been sent to Texas and convert the Facility into a sanctuary.

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has made it easy for everyone to contact the NIH about this urgent issue. Please see the HSUS action alert, take action and share with your friends today.

You can keep updated on the campaign to retire the APF chimpanzees by following Animal Protection of New Mexico on their website and their Facebook page.

Bounty of trolls

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This morning I watched Foxie gather what may have been the largest number of trolls she has ever carried at one time. She had a troll scarf, a sock full of trolls, and probably seven or eight loose trolls. It took her a few minutes just to figure out how she could hold them all at once.

In case you were wondering, she did it by holding the sock and scarf in one hand, a couple trolls in the other hand, one troll in each foot, and one in her mouth.

She seemed quite satisfied with her collection. She spent the rest of the day passing trolls to her caregivers and initiating wild games of chase throughout the sanctuary.

Negra’s active day

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Negra’s not the most active chimpanzee by a long shot, but she was all over the place yesterday. Here she is looking out her new window (the photos through the glass turn out blue, so I doctored it a bit. I like the reflection of the clouds).

Negra checking out view

I love this expression!

Negra looking up

She even investigated some enrichment, which she rarely does:

Negra looking through enrichment