Nepal Plans a Monkey Lab: Please Protest

November 2002

For over 30 years the Washington National (formerly Regional) Primate Center, Seattle, Washington, USA, has been active in primate exploitation overseas.

The center maintains a breeding colony housing over 1,000 monkeys on Tinjil Island in Indonesia, and works closely with the primate laboratory at Bogor, Indonesia. The center also works with the Institute of Medical Primatology at Sochi-Adler, Russia. Now work is under way to establish a breeding facility in Nepal.

According to the abstract of a talk given in June 2002 to the American Society of Primatologists annual conference by Randall Kyes of the Washington Primate Center:
Currently the [primate center] supports two long-standing programs with Indonesia and Russia, and recently established a program with Nepal. The main objectives of the Indonesian and Nepal programs are to establish macaque breeding colonies to ensure the availability of nonhuman primates for biomedical research, facilitate joint research projects, provide educational and training opportunities for students and staff from the collaborating institutions, and assist in the management and conservation of naturally occurring primate populations.

Kyes' abstract stated that the work was "supported in part by NIH [National Institutes of Health] Grant RR-00166."

Kyes' partner in Nepal is Dr. Mukesh Chalise of the Nepal Natural History Society. Chalise spoke at a workshop held from April 17 to 19, 2002 in Washington DC, at the Institute of Laboratory Animal Research (ILAR). ILAR is a component of the US National Academy of Sciences. The subject of the workshop was "International Perspectives - the Future of Nonhuman Primate Resources."

Chalise was flown in from land-locked Nepal, a nation that has never exported monkeys in the past -- and has now apparently been targeted by the US government as a new source of rhesus monkeys for experimentation. In the past Chalise had been protective of primates. The workshop program listed his affiliation as the Natural History Society of Nepal.

Chalise reported that Kyes had been to Nepal several times in conjunction with the establishment of a primate program that would be associated with the Washington Primate Center. Chalise has also visited the center in Seattle, Washington.

In his talk Chalise stated that he favored both the local use of monkeys in Nepal and the export of live primates. He noted that Nepal had no rules governing farming and breeding of monkeys. He presented to the audience plans to establish a primate facility in the Kathmandu Valley.

Chalise described local peoples' resentment of crop-raiding monkeys and assured the audience that Nepalese are not like Indians, and that they do not feel the same concern for monkeys. IPPL does not see any logic in inflicting painful retribution on monkeys because of the inevitable human-monkey conflicts resulting from human population growth.

In the past Dr. Chalise had performed survey work on the wild monkeys of Nepal. IPPL had helped him in a 1998 campaign to stop a massive monkey kill planned by the people of Mankha Village, so it is disappointing to us that he has become involved in a project that could harm monkeys. To the best of IPPL's knowledge, Nepal has no animal welfare legislation.

WHAT YOU CAN DO Please send a letter to the officials whose addresses are listed below requesting that Nepal not establish a biomedical breeding and research facility in conjunction with a laboratory funded by the US Government. Postage from the United States to Nepal costs 80 cents per ounce. Request that Nepal not build a monkey laboratory and that it not export monkeys at a time when there is an increased demand for monkeys to be used in painful and lethal experimentation into biological warfare and other infectious disease agents. His Majesty King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev Narayanhiti Toral Palace Kathmandu, Nepal His Excellency Ambassador Jaya Pratap Rana Royal Nepalese Embassy 2131 Leroy Place NW Washington DC 20008, USA His Excellency the Ambassador of Nepal Royal Nepal Embassy 12A Kensington Palace Gardens London W8 4QU, England