The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

[Carrie McLaren <temporary181 AT stayfreemagazine.org>]

Monkey See, Monkey Sue (for Legal Custody)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20121797/site/newsweek/
Newsweek

Aug. 13, 2007 issue - Are chimpanzees more like babies or bicycles? 
Put another way: are they beings with basic rights, or property to be 
returned to an owner? The answer may decide the fate of Emma and 
Jackson, two chimps at the center of a custody battle between animal 
sanctuaries in Texas and Oregon.

The pair were among more than 200 animals removed from San Antonio's 
Primarily Primates Inc. after the facility was sued last year for 
misusing funds and maintaining unsanitary and dangerous conditions. 
Now the suit has been settled, and PPI is petitioning to reclaim some 
of the creatures. Emma and Jackson's new home, Oregon's Chimps, Inc., 
doesn't want to return them. "To return them to the scene of the 
crime, if you will, is no different than returning a young child to 
an abuse situation and saying, 'Everything's better now'," says Bruce 
Wagman, an animal-law specialist representing Chimps, Inc., and 
others battling PPI.

"This isn't about establishing rights for animals," says Priscilla 
Feral, president of the animal-advocacy group Friends of Animals, 
which took over PPI's operations this year. (The center has spent 
$100,000 rebuilding its facilities, including a new 6,000-foot chimp 
enclosure, and has increased staffing.) "Those animals belong to 
Primarily Primates. They will have wonderful care, and they deserve 
to come back. The legal documents support that, and that ought to be 
sufficient."

Animal welfare is a relatively new legal argument, one that doesn't 
yet trump claims of ownership, says Michigan State law professor and 
animal-rights expert David Favre. But the two arguments may not be 
mutually exclusive-animals can remain property and still acquire 
rights. "Some judges are not finding it incongruous to acknowledge 
that animals are part of the 'prop world,' but because they're such 
unique, living property, they also ought to look at the best 
interests of the animals," Favre says. So where ownership is at all 
vague or questionable, emerging concern for animal rights may tip the 
scale.

-Sanhita Sen