To prevent breeding new chimps that would have to spend their lives in captivity, Chimp Haven gives all the males vasectomies.
But “vasectomies do fail,” said Raven Jackson-Jewett, the attending veterinarian at the sanctuary. “Conan was the one that taught us that.”
Conan had the procedure that but somehow fathered three youngsters anyway, including Tracy, now 10 and a favorite of visitors.
Dr. Jackson-Jewett said that because of Conan, Chimp Haven had learned that chimp vasectomies fail more often than those in humans.
The staffers changed their technique, operated again on about 75 chimps with the new method and haven't had a pregnancy since.
The sanctuary also has learned to care for frail chimps. Many animals from labs have been infected with H.I.V. and hepatitis for vaccine experiments and some have diabetes （not related to experiments）.
They are often old: Some arrive near 50 years of age, close to the end of their liver. Occasionally chimps are deemed too old even to handle the stress of being sent to the sanctuary.
The sanctuaries hope eventually to put themselves out of business. If all goes as planed, in another 50 years or so, there will be no more lab retirees.
Chimps will still be in zoos and, as the laws now stand, private owners can still breed them. But since the demand for their use in research is now zero, that is unlikely to happen on a large scale.
Most privately owned laboratory chimpanzees are also headed for retirement centers. New Iberia has shipped 22 animals to Project Chimps, where Bo and his cohort now live, but still has nearly 200.
The Project Chimps facility, which formerly housed gorillas, is still being renovated for chimps. They will get to play in eight acres of walled-in open meadow － once the walls are fixed. （Unlike gorillas, chimps are agile climbers.）
Those left at New Iberia aren't isolated. They live in groups in large, dome-shaped outdoor cages. The domes have a bit less than a 1,000 square feet of floor space.
Although chimps in research were once housed in smaller cages, and isolation for experiments, practices have changed; labs and sanctuaries have recognized that it is cruel to house chimps alone.
The only other private chimps still at research institutions include 27 at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, and one at the University of Georgia. Yerkes is looking for retirement facilities for its chimps and has sent seven to the Chattanooga Zoo.
Yerkes also sent eight to an unaccredited zoo in England, prompting an outcry from animal welfare advocates in America and in Europe.
The move prompted a lawsuit, because the Fish and Wildlife Service approved it even though advocates insisted there were better options in the United States.
Yerkes said that the English zoo was well equipped and enlisted comment from Dr. Goodall, who said she had visited the facility and supported the move.
The lawsuit was the first test of the protections offered to chimps by the endangered species classification. Exportation from the United States requires a permit from the Fish and Wildlife Service, which can be granted only if the action benefits the species.
The agency accepted Yerkes’s argument that a donation by the English zoo to a group that had never before worked with chimps fulfilled that requirement. The decision outraged many primatologists and chimps advocates, but in the end the courts allowed the move.
Within the animal welfare community, some of the elation about the government decisions of a few years ago has now, inevitably, been replaced by a recognition of the difficult logistics, the need for continued fund-raising and the occasional roadblocks.
“Patience has been a huge lesson for me,” Laura Bonar, chief program and policy officer at Animal Protection of New Mexico, said in an interview. Ms. Bonar was one of the activists who worked to bring about the decisions to end experimentation.
Patience is useful even in the case of chimps like Bo, who have already been transferred to sanctuaries. Soon, perhaps by the end of this year, Bo and the other chimps at the sanctuary are expected to step outside of steel bars for the first time in their lives.
They have been doing well. Janie Gibbons, one of the staffers who takes care of the chimps, said Bo continues to lead by example － as he did recently when the group encountered something they never seen before.
The first time they were given tomatoes, they were flummoxed. “Bo is very brave and tries things first,” said Ms. Gibbons. “He took one and very meticulously ate the peel first, then the fruit.”
Satisfied that tomatoes were safe, the others followed. But not all in rush: Jabari threw his first tomato against the wall, even though he and the other chimps had gathered around Bo and peered as closely as they could as he ate the alien fruit.
Now the chimps all eat tomatoes as if they were apples. And that's what the future may hold for all chimps: open space and tomatoes.
But it's just to take a while.
The agency accepted Yerkes’s argument that a donation by the English zoo to a group that had never before worked with chimps fulfilled that requirement. The decision outraged many primatologists and chimps advocates, but in the end the courts allowed the move.
Within the animal welfare community, some of the elation about the government decisions of a few years ago has now, inevitably, been replaced by a recognition of the difficult logistics, the need for continued fund-raising and the occasional roadblocks.
“Patience has been a huge lesson for me,” Laura Bonar, chief program and policy officer at Animal Protection of New Mexico, said in an interview. Ms. Bonar was one of the activists who worked to bring about the decisions to end experimentation.
Patience is useful even in the case of chimps like Bo, who have already been transferred to sanctuaries. Soon, perhaps by the end of this year, Bo and the other chimps at the sanctuary are expected to step outside of steel bars for the first time in their lives.
They have been doing well. Janie Gibbons, one of the staffers who takes care of the chimps, said Bo continues to lead by example － as he did recently when the group encountered something they never seen before.
The first time they were given tomatoes, they were flummoxed. “Bo is very brave and tries things first,” said Ms. Gibbons. “He took one and very meticulously ate the peel first, then the fruit.”
Satisfied that tomatoes were safe, the others followed. But not all in rush: Jabari threw his first tomato against the wall, even though he and the other chimps had gathered around Bo and peered as closely as they could as he ate the alien fruit.
Now the chimps all eat tomatoes as if they were apples. And that's what the future may hold for all chimps: open space and tomatoes.
But it's just to take a while.
