National Institutes Of Health Committee: Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees Dept: Fifty-two-year-olds Julius and Sandy, 46-year-old Phyllis and 44-year-old Jessica have arrived. These and several other primates are now living like chimpanzees as they play, groom each other and tussle at Chimp Haven in northwest Louisiana the only national sanctuary for retired federal research chimps, according to The Star. A National Institutes of Health committee recommended Jan. 22 that most of the other 350 federally owned research chimpanzees be retired to the federal sanctuary system a system of one. The agency s director will decide whether to accept the recommendations after a 60-day period for public comment and kEITHVILLE, LA. For the first time in their lives, four aging chimpanzees once used in federal research can go outside whenever they like. They can lie on the grass, clamber onto a platform 20 feet up on a chimp-style jungle gym and gaze freely at the open sky, the vista unbroken by steel bars. Julius group is among 111 chimpanzees coming to Chimp Haven over the next 18 months from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette s New Iberia Research Center. They could be the vanguard of a much larger immigration of former research chimps on the way to the refuge in Keithville, La. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.