'Great Chimpanzee Migration' to St. Lucie sanctuary almost complete » TCPalm.com:
The journey to retire 276 chimpanzees to several islands west of Fort Pierce, Florida took nearly 10 years where they will be permanently relocated to the 150-acre Save the Chimps sanctuary; completing "The Great Chimpanzee Migration."
Save the Chimps, founded by the late Dr. Carole Noon in 1997, is the largest chimpanzee sanctuary in the world and is not open to the public. Its mission is to provide a peaceful and permanent refuge for chimpanzees exploited in research, the entertainment industry and the pet trade.
Noon, who died May 2, 2009, worked tirelessly on behalf of chimpanzees and studied the primates at Chimfunsi, a chimpanzee sanctuary in Zambia.
The migration has been an arduous process because of the expense and time it takes to socialize the chimps into family groups so they can live together on the islands. It costs $2,500 to relocate one chimp from New Mexico to Florida. They are usually relocated in groups of 10, which costs a total of $25,000.
The 37-hour trip to transport the chimps from New Mexico to Florida involves a truck pulling a custom-made trailer. Each chimp gets treated to French fries and a window seat. The custom-built trailer will have made at least 26, 4,000-mile round trips since the migration began or the equivalent of traveling around the Earth four times.
For most of the chimps, who spent their lives isolated behind bars, living on concrete slab, it will be the first time they've ever touched grass.
"And some of the chimps, particularly chimps who were born in captivity and all they know is concrete floors and steel bars, they prefer that environment because it's more comforting to them, it's more familiar. But they will just sort of venture out little by little and get more accustomed to it." Since most of the chimps spent the majority of their lives in fear while undergoing painful tests, Noon wanted the chimps to have minimal contact with humans at the sanctuary.
A significant portion of the sanctuary's $4.5 million budget comes from the Arcus Foundation, an organization that funds the conservation of great apes and has offices in Kalamazoo, Mich., New York City and the United Kingdom. Save the Chimps also is financed by private donors from all over the world, including Australia and Europe.
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