Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, face significant welfare challenges in both research and sanctuary settings, requiring specialized care that reflects their complex social and cognitive needs.
The retirement of research chimpanzees to federal sanctuaries represents one of the most significant welfare improvements for captive apes in recent history, but the transition has been slow and inadequately funded. Research chimps that spent decades in small cages, sometimes in isolation, face a long recovery process in social groups with appropriate habitat. Some animals have psychological damage that persists regardless of environmental improvement. The welfare obligations humans have incurred through decades of research use require genuine long-term commitment to sanctuary provision. These animals deserve the best possible life for their remaining decades — a moral debt that inadequate sanctuary funding fails to honor.