DELIVERED TO SAFETY!

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

SAN ANTONIO, Texas– – Fifty-
five stumptail macaques arrived on
September 2 at the Wildlife Animal
Orphanage, after a 35-hour ride from the
Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin.
Native to Thailand, the stumptail colony is
descended from animals used to breed
research subjects for use by the late Harry
Harlow in his notorious infant deprivation
experiments, conducted from 1936 to 1971.
Remaining property of the University of
Wisconsin Regional Primate Research
Center, the stumptails and two breeding
groups of rhesus macaques had been housed
at the Vilas Zoo since 1963.
The stumptail colony still includes
a 37-year-old female who was among those
transferred out of Harlow’s direct custody.
The arrangement predated a clause of the
American Zoo Association code of ethics,
adopted in 1986, which discourages zoos
from providing animals for research not related
to conserving their own species.

University of Wisconsin officials pledged in
1989 and 1990 that they would honor the
spirit of the AZA policy, but UoW dean of
graduate studies Virginia Hinshaw admitted
in August 1997 that 65 members of the zoo
colonies were subsequently killed in experiments,
and 110 more were sold to other
research institutions to use as they wished.
Two months later, the National
Institutes of Health ruled that since the Vilas
colonies could no longer be used for research,
their upkeep could no longer be funded by
NIH grants. The 143 rhesus macaques were
transferred to the Southeast Regional Primate
Research Center at Tulane University, but
the stumptails are now permanently safe from
further experimental use, through the combined
efforts of the Alliance for Animals, the
International Primate Protection League,
Sarasota In Defense of Animals, the
Southwest Foundation, and Wildlife Animal
Orphanage. The University of Wisconsin
paid $40,000 of the $50,000 cost of the
stumptails’ new quarters, where for the first
time they enjoy semi-natural habitat.