NhRP Nonhuman Rights
Project
March 2018
Our joy in learning of Hercules and Leo’s long overdue transfer to a sanctuary is tempered by our knowledge of what they endured during their long years of exploitation at Stony Brook.
On March 22 we learned that the New Iberia Research Center (NIRC) transferred Hercules and Leo—two of our chimpanzee clients whose freedom we have been fighting to secure for nearly five years—to a sanctuary. We are delighted that they will finally be free of NIRC, which took them from their mothers at age two, a time when they should have remained in close contact with their families, able to freely explore their environment and constantly play with and learn from other chimpanzees.
Hercules - Image from Crystal Alba/Project
Chimps
Leo - Image from
Crystal Alba/Project Chimps
Instead, NIRC leased them to Stony Brook University, which forced them to
live for six years in the basement of a campus computer building. There,
scientists regularly placed them under general anesthesia and thrust
fine-wire electrodes into their muscles, merely to satisfy their curiosity
as to how humans evolved to walk with straight legs. That is where we found
them.
As extraordinarily cognitively complex and autonomous beings, Hercules and
Leo are entitled to their bodily liberty. This is why we rejoiced when, in
2015, after we filed a habeas corpus lawsuit on behalf of Hercules and Leo,
they became the first nonhuman animals in history to be granted a habeas
corpus hearing to determine the lawfulness of their detention. Though that
court did not free Hercules and Leo from captivity or recognize their
rights—believing itself bound by the ruling of an appellate court—in
ordering such a hearing, it treated Hercules and Leo just as it would have
treated human beings. This fact itself represents true progress in the fight
for nonhuman rights, and Hercules and Leo will always remain an important
part of this larger, continuing story.
However, our joy in learning of Hercules and Leo’s long overdue transfer to
a sanctuary is tempered by our knowledge of what they endured during their
long years of exploitation at Stony Brook and the fact that first Stony
Brook and then NIRC and Project Chimps steadfastly refused every attempt to
transfer them to Save the Chimps sanctuary, which, since 2013, has offered
to care for them for the rest of their lives at no cost to any third party.
The premiere chimpanzee sanctuary in the US with a proven track record of
caring for and rehabilitating chimpanzees used in research, Save the Chimps
first made this offer in 2013 when we sought recognition of Hercules and
Leo’s right to bodily liberty in the New York courts. It offered again when
Stony Brook, fearing further litigation and further negative worldwide
attention, announced in May of 2015 that it would no longer use them in
research. Save the Chimps offered again after NIRC removed Hercules and Leo
from New York to Louisiana in the dead of the night in late 2015 and again
and again when it became clear that it would take years for Hercules and Leo
to actually be transferred to Project Chimps.
When, in 2016, we ourselves sought Project Chimps’ assistance in having
Hercules and Leo transferred immediately to Save the Chimps, which had the
capacity and expertise to immediately take them and other members of their
social group, we were told to mind our own business—to which we responded
that because Hercules and Leo are our clients, their best interests are most
certainly our business.
NIRC and Project Chimps’ refusal to allow Hercules and Leo to be transferred
to Save the Chimps meant that Hercules and Leo remained at NIRC for two and
a half years longer than they should have. While we recognize that it takes
time and money for sanctuaries to responsibly expand, there was no good
reason for Hercules and Leo to have remained at NIRC.
We will closely follow Hercules and Leo’s progress at
Project Chimps.
Meanwhile, in the US and beyond, we will continue our fight for recognition
of chimpanzees’ personhood and rights, which first brought the story of
Hercules and Leo’s suffering out of the shadows of research facilities and
into public awareness, where it belongs.
Thank you from all of us at the NhRP for supporting Hercules and Leo's
fundamental right to bodily liberty and their transfer to a sanctuary.
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