I love Jody’s eyes. And in this picture, Negra’s eyes peeking over to Elizabeth as she’s taking the photo really bring a smile to my face!
Negra
Celebrating 5 years of sanctuary and a very special birthday
Today has been an incredible day. We’re so moved to see all the love for the Cle Elum Seven as the Give Five donations keep rolling in. As of right now, we’ve raised $10,550 toward our summer goal of $35,000! We’re asking for just $5 as a pledge of support for the chimps and the sanctuary (and as a happy birthday wish for Negra!).
It wouldn’t be a CSNW holiday without a party, of course, and the chimpanzees are expert partiers with five years of practice under their belts. Volunteer caregivers Denice, Seana, and Patti came this morning to help the chimps celebrate. Denice dressed up the morning fruit smoothie and put it in festive plastic shot glasses.
Patti brought several pinatas, including this one to honor Negra’s birthday.
Seana setting up the party in the greenhouse:
Denice:
Patti:
Missy was very interested in the pinata, but she had some nuts to eat first, so she held on to it.
Missy drinking smoothie:
Jamie:
Foxie enjoying some raspberries:
Annie with a pinata:
As for the birthday girl, she has had a pretty great day. Here she is with some fruit smoothie:
And with a tiara pinata (she is the Queen, after all):
After the party Negra explored Young’s Hill, venturing so high up the hill that we lost sight of her for awhile.
And after all that activity, she took a well-deserved nap.
We really can’t say what all of your support means to us. You enable us to do what we do. Here’s to another five years!
Negra’s story
Today is the fifth anniversary of Negra and the Cle Elum Seven’s new lives in sanctuary. It’s amazing what sunshine and good food and comfort can do for these inspiring and resilient chimps. Today is the day to Give Five for our Queen on her birthday! Stay tuned for a video that we will be posting in just a little bit in celebration of five years of sanctuary.
Negra’s History:
Negra was captured from the wild, presumably in 1973, however she could be even older. Buckshire leased her to White Sands Research Center in March 1982 where she got the tattoo “#CA0041.”
WSRC started breeding Negra with Mack right away in April 1982, just one month after her arrival. Mack was a popular breeder – he was also paired at WSRC with Annie, Foxie, Jody, and is Burrito’s father. Tarzan, Rufus, and Spock are just a few other male breeder names we see in many of the chimps’ records. In between transfers to breeding pairs the females were sometimes housed alone, and sometimes with another female. At different points Annie was with Foxie and with Jody, Foxie was with Jody, Jody was with Negra, and Negra was with Karen, who was Burrito’s mother. The cross-over that we read about in these records is interesting, but also very sad. It only emphasizes how much these chimpanzees were used over and over to create more generations of lab chimps.
On November 29, 1983, technicians discovered Negra was pregnant. She gave birth to Heidi in January 1984.
1/8/84 – Delivered healthy female infant #91 Heidi. Removed & taken to nursery.
Heidi was taken immediately away, but Negra was able to stay with Angel (see below) for five whole days.
9/4/85 – Healthy infant born this date.
9/9/85 – Healthy infant removed and taken to nursery – female #126 Angel.
In early 1986 the scribbled notes indicate the lab techs believed Negra has some kind of infectious disease due to loose stool and negative parasite tests, and she was moved to isolation on March 31, 1986.
3/31/86 – Dr. ordered animal removed from main colony and placed in isolation for further testing.
The lab technicians took blood from Negra regularly, knocking her down each time. They took liver biopsies, which meant surgery. They tested her for hepatitis C on June 2, 1987, and for some reason the results did not return until over six months later on January 12, 1988. The entry for that date concluded that there was no evidence for the suspicion that Negra had hepatitis C. Negra had been housed in isolation for over a year and a half due to incorrect blood work. At this point, they transferred her back to the main chimp colony.
1/14/88 – Transferred from Quarantine to Bldg. 300 (Main colony) this date.
1/14/88 – Enter cage #28 by herself. Home again.
Negra was transferred away from quarantine but was put back into the cage she had been in during that year and half, by herself. At this point it was considered her home to be alone in cage #28. Being alone didn’t last long, though. The next week, she was thrown back into breeding pairs.
10/17/89 – Infant born approximately 10:00am, taken from mother and removed to nursery. Infant boy. #205 Noah.
Even after living in isolation, undergoing tests, and having babies taken from her, WSRC still took more from her. In early January 1992, they used her in a study that involved injecting a serum near her lymph nodes in her left leg. By March they had done this five times, and prepped Negra for surgery to remove the nodes. As if that weren’t enough, just a couple months later, Negra was transferred again to another breeding pair. She did not have any more babies however, and left WSRC/Coulston with Annie, Foxie, and Jody to return to Buckshire on August 12, 1996.
Before coming to Cle Elum, Keith, J.B., Diana, and Sarah all met the chimps while they were still at Buckshire. Read this post to see what Diana said about Negra back then.
Negra, arriving at CSNW exactly five years ago today:
Jamie and Negra at the barn doors:
Cage #28 is no longer Negra’s home. Now her home is Young’s Hill, where she’s really finding her place under the sun. It has taken her a little while to be fully comfortable on the hill, but this summer, she’s exploring and spending more and more time outside. Some days she’s hard to find! Seeing Negra, the honorary Queen of CSNW, able to relax and enjoy her home fills everyone around her with joy. She is the epitome of CSNW’s philosophy: Hope. Love. Home… Sanctuary.
Negra getting some reassurance from Jamie:
Happy Anniversary CSNW from Tracy!
Today was sponsored by Tracy Headley. Tracy was the first person to respond to our Give Five Day campaign and chose to sponsor this very special day in honor of our 5 year anniversary. We have so much to celebrate today because not only is it the sanctuary’s anniversary, it is also our beloved Queen Negra’s 40th birthday! None of which would be possible without the support of so many wonderful people. Thank you so much for such a wonderful start to the day, Tracy! And speaking of our amazing supporters, we also have a second sponsor for today which will be posted after the celebrations get under way!
What a difference a day makes
We have been having many days of much needed, but seemingly never ending, rain here at the sanctuary. And let me tell you, Jamie has had a bee in her bonnet for days. And when Jamie’s not happy she makes it well known. I can’t really blame her as it’s hard to be stuck inside after we have had so many beautiful days recently. As caregivers, it is always first in our minds as to how we can make the days better for the chimps, particularly when they aren’t able to go outside. Yesterday, despite our best efforts, Jamie was a grouchy lady and let it be known in no uncertain terms that she wanted nothing to do with any of our suggestions. But today the humans and chimpanzees finally awoke to sunny skies. Everyone was in a good mood and JB even got a laugh from Annie, who typically reserves those for her raucous games of chase with her best friend, Missy. We put a breakfast forage on Young’s Hill to make the most of the day and the chimps were all lined up waiting for the door to open. They immediately all filed through the raceway together with Negra (!) in the lead. Everyone spread out, foraging through the now significantly taller grass, food squeaking with joy (we are hoping to have some great footage of this from the GoPro camera on the hill soon). And then much to our surprise, we spotted Jamie trying her hand at tightrope walking across the fire hose bridge! While this is usually a classic Missy move, I’d say Jamie is giving her a run for her money. And the best thing yet? That bee that’s been in Jamie’s bonnet seems to have flown off.
I love Jamie’s face in this last picture. It almost looks as though she’s giving herself a little congratulatory cheer. I would look like that as well if I had just been able to do a tightrope walk across the fire hose bridge!
New bamboo on the hill
The site that we now call Young’s Hill was once just an empty horse pasture. Here it is in 2010, before we started construction:
A wide open pasture may be great for horses, but it’s awfully boring for chimps. And growing a forest from scratch takes a long time. Thankfully, we were introduced to Jackie Heinricher of Booshoot Gardens (now Provitro BioSciences) and she found a solution for us: bamboo!
We initially planted two groves on Young’s Hill and just recently planted some in the chimps’ greenhouse. It’s a great source of shade in the summer, and it’s also great for climbing, nesting, and eating.
Yesterday, we planted three new species of bamboo on the hill, including Phyllostachys nigra, which has beautiful black culms. All were generously donated to us by Provitro.
The chimps were really excited, though I admit it may have had a little to do with the corn, leeks, onions, and carrots that we spread around the hill.
We’ve never heard the chimps so vocal on the hill before. As they foraged, everyone was pant-hooting with excitement.
Foxie is always suspicious of new things, so at first she and Dora kept kept their distance from the new bamboo:
And Jamie wasn’t quite sure what to make of it either:
But soon everyone took a turn sitting under the new plants:
Yesterday was a great day for all of us and Negra must have gotten caught up in the excitement because she did something we have never seen her do before: she climbed up onto the shaky bridge!
Negra has lost over 10 pounds since coming to the sanctuary, and probably gained a lot of muscle, but she is still not in good enough shape to keep up with the activities of some of the other chimps. If she keeps this up, though, she may soon be giving Missy a run for her money!
We built a few of the structures on Young’s Hill specifically for Negra – they are close to the building and can be accessed without a lot of climbing. Maybe they’ll come in handy when she’s older because for now, Negra has decided that the whole hill is hers.
Upcoming guest bloggers
I’m pretty excited to announce that we’re going to be featuring some guest bloggers who work with apes in the wild! Our mission at the sanctuary is to provide quality lifetime care for the Cle Elum Seven, but also to advocate for apes everywhere. If you’re signed up for our Take Action list, you’ve probably received some action alerts from Eyes on Apes before. These are usually for issues that our nonhuman ape cousins face close to home, like the entertainment, pet, and biomedical industries.
Free-living apes are facing a whole different set of issues. In Africa their habitat is slowly being torn down, and the logging roads create access for hunters to easily hunt chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, and a whole slew of other exotic animals and sell their meat on the black market (it’s called the bushmeat trade). In Southeast Asia, orangutans are losing much of their habitat to palm oil plantations and other agricultural development.
From afar, there’s only so much detail we can provide—but those who are right there witnessing these issues can paint a very different picture. Our goal is to have them tell their stories, and help us to help our closest living relatives who are literally facing extinction.
We already have folks lined up for this exciting project: Dr. Cleve Hicks (former graduate student at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute just down the road) who is now working with apes in the Bili Forest in central Africa; Dr. Debra Durham who is currently in east Africa and has expertise in both captive and free-living issues (you might remember this article about PTSD in ex-biomedical lab chimps, including Negra); and Dr. Zarin Machanda who met JB and Diana at the Fauna Foundation years ago, and has worked with chimpanzees in east Africa. Stay tuned for these stories with great information coming very soon!
Here’s a photo of Negra, who now gets to have sunshine, friends, and choices after being stolen from Africa and used in biomedical research for decades. Let’s raise awareness about others like Negra still in labs, and for her relatives in Africa that need our help. Share this video and subscribe to the blog if you haven’t already, so you’ll be sure to get notified of the upcoming guest blogger posts!
—
Guest blog posts:
Resilience and The Landmine Snare by Maureen McCarthy
Along the Bushmeat Highway: Part One, Two, and Three and The FARDC ‘Petting Zoo’ at Bili by Dr. Cleve Hicks
Video interview Part One and Part Two with Dr. Debra Durham (presented as a Take Action Tuesday posts)
Jacky and Nama by Dr. Sheri Speede
Meet the Chimpanzees of Kanyawara and Research at Kanyawara by Dr. Zarin Machanda
Margot and Is successful reintroduction possible? by Dr. Gwendy Reyes-Illg
Why are orangutans endangered in the wild? by Rich Zimmerman