The Little Rock Zoo

.The Little Rock Zoo needs to step up and care for the animals better! Please read the several artciles here with deaths, sickness and a bald chimp!

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

How To Help

Who’s living behind the concrete and steel bars? What are the names, lab ID numbers, ages, genders, and other identifying information of all the chimpanzees held today in U.S. labs? WHO’S THERE? is a campaign designed to find out – with your help.

We’re asking for your signature to demand that laboratories holding federally funded chimpanzees release their names, ages, and other crucial information. Project R&R has made formal requests, but as of February 2009 most labs are ignoring or dismissing those requests on technicalities that allow them to circumvent the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Your tax dollars demand an answer.

Project R&R has sent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the main research facilities holding federally owned or supported chimpanzees. We have also sent FOIA requests to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for information on chimpanzees who have been released from labs and trasnferred to Chimp Haven. Chimp Haven is the federally supported sanctuary for “retired” chimpanzees that receives 75 percent of its operating costs from NIH.

To date, only two labs have provided updated information on their residents, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the Alamogordo Primate Facility. New Iberia Research Center, Southwest National Primate Research Center, and Yerkes National Primate Research Center refused to answer our requests, based on the fact that they are considered private facilities and therefore not subject to federal disclosure laws, even though they receive public money. In addition, we have received some FOIA documents from NIH regarding chimpanzees transferred to Chimp Haven, however only their ID numbers were listed for a majority of them.

Preparing a current and accurate census of chimpanzees in U.S. research facilities takes the work of every one of us. This data along with information provided by Project R&R sources will help us identify individual chimpanzees in most need of immediate rescue. Research facilities cannot move chimpanzees from lab to lab, hide the whereabouts of any one of them, and continue to treat them like expendable commodities.

HOW TO HELP: Sign the Who’s There Letter to demand that laboratories comply with federal disclosure laws. Further, even in the specific situations where technicalities and loopholes may actually allow labs to withhold information, the public deserves answers and the chimpanzees deserve to be known.

See existing Who’s There lists for each lab. (Click on the profile for each lab and open the Who’s There Excel chart)"

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