My Cause

The Mission: Project Chimps' mission is to provide lifelong exemplary care to chimpanzees retired from research.

About the Organization: Project Chimps is the newest chimpanzee sanctuary in the United States and was founded to provide lifelong exemplary care to 200 former research chimpanzees at its sanctuary on over 230 acres of forested land in the Blue Ridge Mountains of north Georgia. Today, Project Chimps is home to 77 chimpanzees and we are working to move nearly 130 more to permanent sanctuary.

Our History

September 14, 2015, marked the effective end of unrestricted invasive experiments on chimpanzees in the United States. All chimps, both wild and captive, were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) on that day, after a decades-long fight to end the use of chimpanzees in laboratory research.

Chimpanzees in private research institutions also needed a forever home. In anticipation of the federal policy change, Project Chimps reached an agreement in 2014 with the University of Louisiana’s New Iberia Research Center (NIRC), which houses the largest population of privately-owned chimpanzees in the United States, to provide sanctuary to all of NIRC’s chimpanzees.