A dispute over the fate of more than 60 chimpanzees in Liberia has been settled, according to the New York Blood Center, which used the animals for biomedical research before leaving them on remote river islands, and the Humane Society of the United States, which has been their primary caretaker since 2015.
In a statement, the two organizations said Tuesday that the blood center had agreed to provide $6 million to the Humane Society, which will assume responsibility for the chimps for the rest of their lives — a job the animal protection group had, for all practical purposes, already taken on. Humane Society president and chief executive Wayne Pacelle said in an e-mail that the sum, which will be invested, amounts to a “splitting of the costs” of housing, food and medical care that are expected to total about $17 million over time.
The agreement ends a bitter controversy over what obligations the center had to chimpanzees it used in tests that helped to develop a hepatitis B vaccine and safer blood transfusions for humans. That research began in the mid-1970s and lasted until 2006, when the blood center pulled out of Liberia and moved its 66 remaining primates to estuary islands. For almost a decade, the center supplied the animals with food and clean water, which aren’t available on the islands.
The center withdrew funding in 2015, saying the chimps were the responsibility of the impoverished Liberian government, which at the time was lurching through an Ebola epidemic.
