Should federal law forbid owning a chimpanzee as a pet?
That was a question before federal legislators, including Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) on Thursday. Lawmakers reviewed the Captive Primate Safety Act in a Water, Oceans, and Wildlife hearing of the House Natural Resources Committee.
The bill would make a federal law against the purchase, trade, or transport of any live species of nonhuman primate like chimpanzees, galagos, gibbons, gorillas, lemurs, lorises, monkeys, orangutans, tarsiers, or any hybrid of such a species.
The bill was introduced in May by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) and has 53 co-sponsors in the House. The bill passed the House in a previous session, Blumenauer said, “only to die a lingering death the Senate.” However, he hopes the bill has a shot with the new Democratic majority in the Senate, where he believes the sponsor Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) will “be able to get it over the finish line.”
In testimony Thursday, Blumenauer said most people cannot provide the special housing and social structure primates require and “puts their welfare at risk.”
“Even if you’re not a huge fan of animal welfare, you ought to be concerned about human welfare because this behavior puts humans at risk either from the transmission of disease or serious injury or death,” he said. “When primates reach adolescence, they often demonstrate aggression towards those who they perceive as lower-ranking members of their troop.
“When kept as pets, this means these teenagers can inflict great physical harm on children, friends, and neighbors.”
Blumenauer recounted the story of a woman in eastern Oregon who was attacked by her 200-pound chimpanzee last month. The woman and her mother sustained injuries to their torsos, legs, and arms. The chimpanzee had to be shot, he said, and “was killed for expressing normal behaviors in a lifetime of captivity.”
He also recalled the story of Connecticut’s Charla Nash, whose pet chimp, Travis, mauled her in 2009. The attack was so severe, Nash needed and received a face transplant. Toxicology reports found Travis had been given tea laced with Xanax on the day of the account, perhaps explaining his aggressive behavior, officials said.
Cohen cited a report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which said about 75 percent of wild primate populations are declining. He asked Steve Guertin, deputy director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, whether or not U.S. primate pet ownership played a role in the declines.
“The pet trade of nonhuman primates certainly drives a market that contributes to the decline of wild populations, and the U.S. is a part of that trade,” Guertin said. “However, we believe that the primary threat to the conservation of the species globally is the removal of primates in the wild. This is poaching. This is bushmeat. This is illegal trafficking.”
For this, Guertin said his department’s focus is on law enforcement to shut down poachers and shut down criminal networks of animal traffickers.
Tennessee, like many other states, already has laws on the books against owning a primate as a pet. Here, primates are categorized as Class I wildlife, species that are “inherently dangerous to humans.” They’re in the same class as wolves, bears, elephants, rhinoceroses, lions, and more. In Tennessee, this class of wildlife can only be possessed by zoos, circuses, and commercial propagators.