Chimps nowadays are sold online as pets. They can also be leased to laboratories for medical experiments where they are poked and injected for research projects. Such practice will soon come to an end, as The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have proposed to place the chimpanzee under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, both in the wild and in captivity.
The agency’s director Dan Ashe told in an interview with The Washington Post that the chimpanzees in the wild have already been in the list since 13 years ago, but those who were in captivity were only listed as threatened in order to allow trade and use of the animals for medical projects.
Ashe added that because of the separate listing, a lot of people think that the species is not endangered, when in fact they are struggling to survive. Furthermore, they are also allowed to be traded for commercial entertainment purposes, and humans have hunted the apes for a delicacy called a “bushmeat.”
It is important that the general public pays attention to the predicaments of the chimpanzees in the wild, and the threat that humans bring to these animals. Many people think that such practices are not causing them to be endangered.
The proposal is in response to many groups lobbying for the endangerment listing of the chimpanzee. Such groups were the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, Jane Goodall Institute, and the Humane Society of the United States was campaigning to improve the treatment and understanding of the great apes.
The proposal was further highlighted when recent findings of two federal research institutions revealed that the use of chimpanzee for researches related to infectious diseases, neuroscience, and other illnesses were not necessary.
The United States is the only country left in the developed world that still uses apes for research. Countries in Europe have long banned the practice.
