​Jenny and Jimmy Desmond are the founders of Liberia Chimpanzee Rescue and Protection (LCRP) in West Africa and its affiliate 501c3 in the United States, Partners in Animal Protection and Conservation (PAPC). Along with their team, Jenny and Jimmy work to improve the lives of chimpanzees, both wild and orphaned, in Liberia.

As founder of LCRP, Jenny Desmond is living the life she always knew would be hers: a life of animal conservation and protection. She and her team care for chimpanzees who are orphaned as a result of the illegal bushmeat and wildlife trades. She spends days conducting LCRP business, but at night, Jenny is “mom” to the orphans who are handed over to LCRP’s sanctuary by wildlife officials after confiscation. She nurtures them and helps them form bonds with the other chimpanzees in LCRP's care to ensure they have fulfilling lives in their sanctuary family. While providing love, enrichment, and refuge to these chimps—an immediate need—Jenny actively works toward her ultimate goal: to protect wild chimpanzee populations by partnering in the fight against animal trafficking and implement successful conservation initiatives.

Jimmy Desmond is a wildlife veterinarian and a consultant specializing in emerging disease and the illegal wildlife trade. He graduated from Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, earning a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree and a Masters in Comparative Biomedical Sciences. Alongside his work with LCRP, Jim leads research on infectious disease, including identifying the wildlife reservoir for the Ebola virus.

...​they visited Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center in Borneo and realized that helping endangered species and making meaningful change in animal conservation could become their life’s work.

Since the Desmonds embarked on a round-the-world backpacking trip in 1999, they’ve been involved in the field of wildlife conservation. On that trip, they visited Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center in Borneo and realized that helping endangered species and making meaningful change in animal conservation could become their life’s work. For the next couple of years, Jenny and Jimmy traveled to Africa and Asia, volunteering at sanctuaries and wildlife conservation organizations to learn and to understand how they operate.

​Along the way, they met and nurtured orphaned animals of many species. In 2000, they were offered the opportunity that would change their lives: rehabilitating two year-old-orphaned chimpanzee, Matooke. Their experience with Matooke confirmed for the Desmonds that their efforts could benefit individuals and on a larger scale, the protection and preservation of entire species.

​​After several months of love and care, Matooke was successfully integrated into Uganda Wildlife Education Centre’s rescued chimpanzee family, and Jenny and Jimmy returned to the U.S. to pursue education and experience that would lead them back to wildlife conservation in Africa. Jimmy entered vet school, and Jenny held positions in nonprofits that provided experience in fundraising and marketing—skills that are invaluable in her work today.

Since 2010, Jenny and Jimmy, along with their dog Princess, have been in Africa working with wildlife conservation organizations that include The Jane Goodall Institute, EcoHealth Alliance, Smithsonian Institute, Uganda Wildlife Education Centre, and ​Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. A team of three, Jenny, Jimmy, and Princess have lived in nine countries together, always with the mission of helping wildlife and furthering conservation initiatives Immediately upon their arrival in Liberia, chimpanzee orphans literally arrived on their doorstep, needing not only emergency care but lifetime sanctuary.

Princess plays an important role as a canine caregiver, providing her “siblings” a lot of fun, setting gentle boundaries, and shepherding them toward empathy and mutual understanding.

In 2015, the Humane Society of the United States asked the Desmonds to relocate to Liberia from Kenya to take over care of 66 chimpanzees, living across six islands in an estuarine habitat, who had been retired from medical research. These chimps, formerly the responsibility of the New York Blood Center (NYBC), were on the verge of starvation, ​having been abandoned by the NYBC some months earlier. Jenny and Jimmy came to Liberia to create new feeding, care, and birth control protocols. Within weeks, the “island chimps” began to trust that food and water would be brought to them consistently; improvements in their demeanor and physical health were remarkable. With their most basic needs met, they began to thrive in healthy communities and trusting relationships.

Liberia Chimpanzee Rescue and Protection grew out of this experience, as word spread that the Desmonds could care for confiscated and orphaned chimps. Immediately upon their arrival in Liberia, chimpanzee orphans literally arrived on their doorstep, needing not only emergency care but lifetime sanctuary. To date, the Desmonds have taken in over 40 chimpanzees, ranging in age from a few months to ten years and numbers are growing rapidly. Ideally, these individuals will form a family and live together in a sanctuary that simulates—as closely as possible—a life in the wild.

Of course, the Desmond's hope is that fewer and fewer chimps will need care in sanctuaries—because those in the wild will be protected. Now residents of Liberia themselves, the Desmonds work alongside local Liberians, the government and international organizations to charge and arrest wildlife traffickers and poachers involved in the bushmeat and pet trades.

LCRP is also involved in many complementary programs, partnering with a diverse group of local and international organizations to further wildlife protection and conservation initiatives. Their hope is that with collaborative energy and efforts in all aspects of protection and conservation, the critically endangered chimpanzee and the unique biodiversity of Liberia will thrive.

ROBERTSVILLE, Liberia STANDING on the bow of the outboard motor boat rocking in the brown water of the Little Bassa river, Betsy Brotman cupped her hands around her mouth and bellowed toward the jungle island. ''Char-lie! Char-lie!''

She turned to a passenger in the boat. ''Wait till you see Charlie,'' she whispered. ''He's fantastic.'' She shouted again: ''Char-lie! Char- lie!''

For a while it seemed no one was listening. Then, finally, a small, dark, hulking chimpanzee emerged from the dense bush. He lumbered across the beach and waded thigh-deep into the water. Scowling, he raised his right hand and let fly a rock in the direction of the boat. It plopped into the river several inches short of its target.

''That's Charlie,'' Miss Brotman explained. ''Didn't I tell you? Isn't he fantastic?''

Charlie is one of about 200 chimpanzees in Liberia who have ''retired'' as research animals in studies of hepatitis viruses, research that now appears to be close to a successful conclusion. He is the dominant chimp on Red Deer Island, a sort of halfway house for a select group of experimental animals that are in the process of being reintroduced to the wild.

''They did human society a favor,'' said Miss Brotman, head of Vilab II, a research facility operated by the New York Blood Center in association with the Liberian Institute for Biomedical Research. ''It's our responsibility to try to pay them back by letting them live out their lives in their natural environment.''

Vilab II, a complex of laboratories, staff housing and screened-in chimp bungalows set in the rain forest about 40 miles from Monrovia, is one of several hepatitis research institutes that are attempting the difficult task of returning ''retired'' chimpanzees to the wild in Africa. It was established 10 years ago, and about 50 chimps were captured to serve as an initial experimental and breeding colony.

Young chimps are excellent models for hepatitis research because they are so genetically close to humans and exhibit the same biochemical changes from the hepatitis viruses, yet they do not contract the clinical disease that makes tests on humans so risky. Miss Brotman emphasized that no experiment performed at Vilab has ever resulted in the death or disablement of a chimp.

But the chimps lose their value as research animals by the time they reach about four years of age. Since a chimp may live for 40 years, that leaves a long retirement.

Some can be put into zoos or used in breeding programs, but for the rest the prospects are bleak. It is expensive to keep an adult chimpanzee in captivity, and chimps that have outlived their research usefulness are often put to death. Until recently they have not been able to be returned to the wild because they never learned survival skills; most were bred in captivity, but some were taken by poachers who killed the mother and sold the baby for $15,000 or more.

1,500 Chimps in U.S. Laboratories

With that in mind, Miss Brotman and Alfred M. Prince, the New York- based director of the Vilab project, began in 1978 to try to develop a program to return the chimps to the wild.

Though that may sound like a simple and logical idea, only a few laboratories have set up such programs. There are currently as many as 1,500 chimpanzees in American labs, breeding facilities and zoos. Almost all of them will spend their entire lives behind bars.

About one chimp in every four used in hepatitis research becomes an asymptomatic carrier. These must stay in captivity.

Vilab's rehabilitation program begins by placing groups of about 10 chimps between 5 and 10 years of age on an island downriver from the institute.

On the island, the chimps are provided with some supplementary food and their progress is carefully monitored. Any animals that are not adjusting to freedom - for example, those that are not eating or are being frequently beaten up by other animals - can be returned to the protection of civilization.

Most of the chimps, however, do appear to gradually become accustomed to life in a natural habitat, Miss Brotman said. They learn to forage for food, build nests in the trees, have sexual relations, give birth - in the last two and a half years four babies have been born on Red Deer Island - care for the young and form a closely knit troop with a normal social hierarchy.

''Many of these animals lived in my house and slept in my bed as infants,'' Miss Brotman said. But after they have been two to three years on the island, she added, ''even I can't walk among them safely. An adult male chimp weighs in at about 150 pounds, is stronger than a man and far more aggressive than a gorilla.''

Life Without Groceries

The process does not end there, however. After five or six years on the island, the chimps need to be transferred to a game reserve where they will have enough space, roughly one acre per chimp, to fend for themselves without anyone bringing them groceries. The area into which they are released must also not have other chimpanzee troops too close by, since that could lead to conflicts that the tenderfoot chimps, unused to the laws of the jungle, would probably lose.

A first group of 10 chimpanzees is scheduled to be released this summer in the Asagny National Park in the Ivory Coast, one of only a handful of reserves in West Africa that conservationists consider reasonably well- protected from poachers and other forms of human encroachment.

For their first year or so in the wild, the chimps will wear radio telemeters on collars, each with its own frequency, so that every individual's whereabouts and progress can be monitored. Within two years, the collars will disintegrate.

While there is no guarantee that everything will work out as planned, there are encouraging signs, such as Charlie throwing the rock at Miss Brotman, an aggressive display that suggests that Charlie has become a true troop leader and is no longer anyone's pet.

''The point is to give them a quality of life they couldn't have in even the best facility,'' Miss Brotman said. ''It's only right. They really are near human, you know.''

Before dawn on the day before Easter, Betsy Brotman huddled with several other people in the center hall of her house in Monrovia, Liberia, as a storm of explosions and gunfire swept the neighborhood.

For 21 years, Ms. Brotman, a Newark native, had run a Liberian laboratory affiliated with the New York Blood Center where chimpanzees were used in pioneering studies of hepatitis and other human ills. But as a new wave of warfare engulfed the long-suffering West African country, that work faded into insignificance. Like all of Liberia's 2.6 million inhabitants, Ms. Brotman was once again forced to focus on the basic task of staying alive.

In a country where sporadic civil war has claimed 150,000 lives since 1989, the plight of a single expatriate and a laboratory full of chimpanzees provides only the smallest glimpse of a great tragedy -- something like viewing a few square inches of Picasso's "Guernica." Yet even in that detail, the pain is boundless.

War claimed the life of Ms. Brotman's husband three years ago and gave her a daughter when she adopted one of dozens of infants left behind to starve after a village was massacred in 1990. And now, war was threatening to end her life's work.

With shouting and rifle shots all around, Ms. Brotman, 53, asked a hired hand to turn off the small generator that powered an incubator warming blood cells for a hepatitis study. The noise of the motor might attract attention. "I began counting the hours," she said. "At a certain point, I knew I'd lost the cells."

Yesterday, Ms. Brotman -- who was evacuated by American troops two weeks ago and has been staying with her father in Maplewood, N.J. -- was still holding out hope that she could return to Monrovia this week with money for the laboratory's 45 employees and food for its 66 chimpanzees.

But in an endless round of telephone calls to Liberia, she learned that the laboratory -- which she established for the New York Blood Center in 1974 and had rebuilt twice in the last six years -- had been overrun by soldiers of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, one of several well-armed, largely adolescent armies vying for control of the region.

Employees living nearby were robbed of watches and jewelry, but so far, the animals were apparently not harmed, Ms. Brotman said. On Monday, one employee hiked eight miles to the lab along a forest trail to carry food to the chimpanzees, she said.

Officials at the Blood Center, which supplies blood to 200 hospitals in and around New York City and studies blood-borne diseases, said that 15 of the chimps at the Liberian lab carried hepatitis C and one had hepatitis B, but that they posed no serious risk to people or wildlife should they be released or eaten.

Last weekend, Ms. Brotman sat with her 7-year-old daughter, Sylvannah, on a white leather sofa in her father's den and -- between phone calls and cigarettes -- tried to grapple with her losses and plan her return to Liberia, which she said was her only home.

Ms. Brotman left Bennington College in 1968 to take a secretarial position with the New York Blood Center's research laboratory on East 67th Street. But her desk job did not last long. Described as "a brilliant woman and superb manager" by her longtime supervisor, Dr. Alfred M. Prince, Ms. Brotman was dispatched to West Africa in 1971 to try to collect blood samples from wild chimpanzees, then to investigate whether hepatitis B was being transmitted by such blood-sucking insects as bed bugs.

For the insect study, she visited the rooms of prostitutes in the Ivory Coast, spraying pesticides to collect samples. With vermin exterminated, "the prostitutes were very appreciative," Ms. Brotman said.

In 1974, Ms. Brotman moved to Liberia to assemble a colony of chimpanzees for hepatitis studies and vaccine tests. Chimpanzees are well suited for such work because they can carry human hepatitis viruses, Ms. Brotman said, but unlike their human relations do not develop serious illness.

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Liberia was ideal, said Dr. Prince, a senior researcher at the Blood Center, because it was part of the chimpanzee's home range. At the jungle compound, the chimps live in spacious outdoor cages, Ms. Brotman said, instead of cramped in small cages inside sealed buildings, as they are in primate centers here.

Ms. Brotman, who moved to Liberia with a daughter from a prior marriage, said she thrived on the "challenge of living in a difficult place." Soon after settling in, she adopted the first of four African girls. In 1986, Ms. Brotman married a British engineer, Brian Garnham, who went to work at the compound.

Scientists at the compound, 40 miles outside of Monrovia, made substantial progress in the fight against viral hepatitis. A vaccine for hepatitis B was developed and tested, and methods for eliminating viruses from blood also were refined there, Dr. Prince said. In addition, the work has helped unravel the puzzle of hepatitis C, which afflicts some four million Americans and millions more overseas, he said. The laboratory also worked on a possible vaccine against the parasite that causes river blindness, an ailment affecting some 17 million Africans.

But in December 1989, an era of violence and anarchy began, and it has continued to swell and ebb. Dr. Eugene Johnson, a veterinarian at Yale University School of Medicine, worked with Ms. Brotman from 1989 until 1992. "It's a miracle any of us stayed alive during that time," he said.

Massacres, looting and starvation were commonplace, Ms. Brotman said. They abandoned the laboratory, and half of the chimpanzees died of starvation or thirst. Dr. Johnson said that he, Ms. Brotman and Mr. Garnham spent most of their time helping relief agencies distribute rice to thousands of people hiding in the forest and gathered in camps and ruined villages.

In November 1990, Ms. Brotman and her husband filled their house with starving babies left behind after a village was massacred. One of the infants soon became Ms. Brotman's youngest daughter, Sylvannah.

"All these babies just sat there and didn't say a word," Ms. Brotman said. "They just ate and ate and ate. They never dropped a grain of rice."

She also adopted two older girls. Velma, now 20, attends Hunter College and works at the Blood Center two days a week. Harriet, 18, is a high school senior on Staten Island, where she lives with relatives. Ms. Brotman's oldest adopted daughter is a nurse in Minnesota.

In Maplewood last weekend, Sylvannah scribbled in a coloring book and played with her grandfather's two dogs, seemingly unfazed by her mother's accounts of the war. The girl will stay with her grandfather, Sidney, if Ms. Brotman returns to Liberia.

In October 1992, after a flicker of peace in which research had resumed, fighting erupted again. As the front approached the compound, Ms. Brotman and her husband did not flee. "We just figured we'd survived to this point, so we could survive some more," she said.

But on Jan. 31, 1993, soldiers broke down the door and shot and killed Mr. Garnham in front of her.

Ms. Brotman spent seven months in the United States, but once relative calm returned, she went back to the laboratory. Several significant research projects were under way when warfare overwhelmed Liberia again early this month. "We were right in the middle of evaluations of a candidate hepatitis C vaccine," Dr. Prince said. Also under way were experimental treatments to stop chronic hepatitis C infections, he said.

Some of the research can be salvaged if peace returns, he said. In the meantime, Dr. Prince said, the Blood Center is negotiating with two countries, which he would not identify, to try to find a new site for the lab. But any move would probably take two years of preparation, he said.

Many scientists who have worked at the center are already mourning its loss, even though Ms. Brotman remains determined to rebuild it. Dr. Preston Marx, a professor of microbiology at New York University, first visited the Liberian center in 1988 to study the correlation between viruses found in monkeys and those in neighboring human populations. He returned during a break in the fighting in 1994 and worked with Ms. Brotman on monkey viruses.

They will share authorship on a paper in the June issue of the journal Virology that bolsters the theory that viruses related to the agent causing AIDS can move quite readily from monkeys to humans, Dr. Marx said. That is one of many papers on which Ms. Brotman -- despite the lack of an advanced degree -- has shared authorship.

"It was the best lab in West Africa," Dr. Marx said, "a wonderful place for getting work done." He described the laboratory in the past tense, he said, because he was convinced there was little hope it would be saved.

Undeterred, Ms. Brotman yesterday caught a bus from Maplewood into Manhattan and continued to make phone calls from the New York Blood Center's office to contacts in Liberia and neighboring countries.

Ms. Brotman has also spent time shopping. Among her purchases at a mall in Summit, N.J., were a raincoat and some sheets -- for her bed back in Monrovia.

In a heavily forested area about 65 miles east of Monrovia, Liberia, statues of stone monkeys keep vigil over a sprawling campus of buildings that has seen better days. The Liberian Institute for Biomedical Research (LIBR) was established in the 1970s as a premier research facility to develop scientific breakthroughs for a variety of viral infections, including hepatitis. The rusted, empty animal cages serve as a reminder of the past research conducted here.

Now, the facility finds itself drawn into an epidemiological battle against another outbreak, this time, the Ebola virus. LIBR is one of only a few laboratories in Liberia where Ebola specimens are sent to be tested. Due to the spiralling number of Ebola cases in the region, boosting LIBR’s laboratory testing capacity has been a top priority for a team of medical and disaster experts with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“People are dependent on these test results,” said Gary Wes Carter, an emergency management chief with USAMRIID. “The longer a sample sits here, the longer a doctor in the field goes without an answer needed to make critical decisions about patient care.”

Since April, American laboratory and disease control experts have been working at LIBR to process Ebola samples and train local technicians. When the rate of Ebola infections spiked in June, more equipment and personnel were brought in. As a result, LIBR’s lab processing capacity almost doubled from 40 specimens a day to more than 70. The goal is to eventually be able to test approximately 100 specimens a day, with assistance from the USAID-led Ebola Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) and the USAID Mission in Liberia.

USAID’s disaster response and development experts are working to upgrade the laboratory facility by improving specimen containment, providing improved internet access, renovating hygiene facilities, repairing plumbing, and working with contractors to rewire the building so that it receives a steady source of electricity.

“There are a number of projects underway,” said DART Logistics Officer Sergio Solis. “Working together, we could make LIBR not only more efficient, but more sustainable for the Liberian scientists and laboratory technicians who will be running the facility.”

Laboratory experts with the USAMRIID agree that partnerships are the key to combatting the Ebola outbreak.

“We couldn’t have made the lab sustainable in the long-term without the assistance of USAID,” said Carter. “I have never been to an outbreak response where there has been this much intergovernmental collaboration. This has been amazing.”

[...] The National Reference Lab of Liberia is a former chimpanzee-research center and sits at the end of a dirt road in the forest near Monrovia’s international airport. It is well staffed and well equipped. An American virologist named Lisa Hensley had been working there with Liberian and American colleagues, testing dozens of clinical samples of liquids from the bodies of people suspected of having Ebola. Hensley works with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and has been doing research on Ebola in U.S. government biocontainment labs for more than fifteen years. She and her colleagues, wearing pressurized P.P.E. suits, were using devices called PCR machines to find out if Ebola was present in the samples, in order to help doctors in Liberia identify people who were infected. Technicians at the lab tested the blood of Tamba Snell. It came up negative for Ebola, and Hensley e-mailed the result to a doctor at Samaritan’s Purse. The real Tamba Snell, Kent Brantly, got sicker. [...]

After about 30 years of using a colony of chimpanzees in Liberia for biomedical research, which ended 10 years ago [which would be 2005], the New York Blood Center has now withdrawn all funding for them, prompting animal welfare groups to urge the center to reconsider its decision.

For now, the Humane Society of the United States is supporting the chimps, which are owned by the government of Liberia, and is starting a campaign to raise funds for them.

“The New York Blood Center is abandoning 66 chimpanzees and leaving their fate to chance,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of the society. The cost of caring for and feeding the chimps is about $30,000 a month.

Brian Hare, an anthropologist and primatologist at Duke University who is also known for his studies of dog intelligence, started a petition on Change.org to urge people to contact the New York Blood Center.

Mr. Hare said in an email, “I have studied great apes for 20 years in all contexts across the globe — labs, zoos, sanctuaries, the wild” and others. “Never, ever have I seen anything even remotely as disgusting as this.”

Victoria O’Neill, a spokeswoman for the blood center, said officials there would not grant interviews regarding the issue because “there is arbitration going on, brought by the Liberian government.”

A brief statement from the center said it had withdrawn support after “a long period of unproductive discussions with the Liberian government about their responsibilities in this regard, during which time we incurred millions of dollars of costs.”

Ms. O’Neill said the center “never had any obligation for care for the chimps, contractual or otherwise.”

The news site Front Page Africa first reported on the uncertain fate of the chimps last week [note - as of April 2022, this link does not work: http://www.frontpageafricaonline.com/index.php/news/5267-new-york-blood-center-leaves-liberia-s-chimps-to-starvation ].

Fatorma K. Bolay, director of the Liberian Institute for Biomedical Research in Charlesville, which cares for the chimpanzees — who live uncaged on six mangrove islands — said that the institute cannot afford to pay for their food and care.

He said the humane society has been paying for food and repairs since March 6, when funding from the blood center stopped, but that caretakers are working for free.

“Why would they walk away from the animals?” Dr. Bolay said about the blood center’s funding withdrawal. “We have to find a solution to take care of these animals.”

The history of the research center, called Vilab II, dates back to 1974, when the blood center contracted with the institute to do research primarily on the hepatitis virus, which survives in blood and posed a threat to the safety of the supply of donated blood. Around this time, the United States banned importation of chimpanzees caught in the wild.

By 2005, the blood center had stopped research on the chimps and started trying to make arrangements for their long-term care. [...]

A decade ago, the blood center appeared to be committed to caring for the chimps in retirement. Alfred M. Prince, director of the Vilab II project for the blood center, wrote an article in the American Society of Primatologists Bulletin in December 2005, seeking a foundation to take over care of the chimps. Dr. Prince wrote that the blood center “recognizes its responsibility to provide an endowment to fund the Sanctuary for the lifetime care of the chimpanzees.”

But Ms. O’Neill said in an email that this was Dr. Prince’s opinion and was “not authorized or approved” by the blood center. She added that the center “did not ever establish any endowment for animal care, chimpanzees included.”

In 2007, the blood center withdrew its staff from the institute in Liberia, but continued to support the chimpanzees. In January, Dr. Bolay said the blood center informed the institute that March 5 would be the last day of support. Previous negotiations about the chimps’ future had broken down, Dr. Bolay said.

The humane society hired Agnes Souchal, general manager of the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Cameroon, to assess the state of the chimpanzees. She said in an interview that there is little to no natural food on the islands and the animals were completely dependent on their caretakers, who were feeding them every other day.

The feeding schedule had not changed, but there was more food in the past, she said.

She said she found chimpanzees “without water.” There is no fresh water on the islands and the water system had broken down. Since Ms. Souchal’s visit, it has been fixed with funds from the United States and international humane societies.

Kathleen Conlee, vice president for animal research at the Humane Society of the United States, said the group is starting a crowdfunding effort on the site GoFundMe to raise about $150,000. “Our long-term goal is to provide these chimpanzees with true sanctuary,” she said. She said at least 16 other animal welfare groups are also calling on the center to reinstate funding.

Ms. Conlee said, “You cannot just use chimps like this and just abandon them and get away with it.”

• Correction: June 4, 2015 : In article on Friday about the fate of chimpanzees in Liberia that were used by the New York Blood Center for medical research referred incorrectly in some editions to Kathleen Conlee, vice president for animal research at the Humane Society of the United States. She does not have a Ph.D. and therefore is not “Dr. Conlee.”

When veterinarian [Dr. James Stephen Desmond (born 1971)], V08, VG08, and his wife, Jenny, first arrived in Liberia in July 2015 to care for a group of chimpanzees, the situation they found brought them to tears. “It was horrible,” recalled Jim. “The chimps were desperate. You’d come up with a boat to bring them food, and the chimps would go crazy trying to climb in to grab it. And they were fighting each other, because there just wasn’t enough to go around.”

For thirty years, chimpanzees kept at the Liberian Institute for Biomedical Research served as research subjects for hepatitis B vaccine studies conducted by the New York Blood Center. In 2006, the blood center halted its experiments, retiring the apes to six nearby islands within an estuarine habitat with extensive mangrove forests. For nearly a decade, former lab staff cared for the animals, which were wholly dependent on humans for food and fresh water. Then, in March 2015, the blood center cut off all funds. The staff—who kept on caring for the chimps, unpaid—knew all the animals were likely to die if they couldn’t find anyone to help.

No one knows what would have happened if not for the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which started in Guinea in December 2013 and raged across the neighboring countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing more than 11,000 people. Because the former hepatitis research operation was one of the few laboratories in Liberia—a nation torn apart by a 14-year civil war—researchers from international health agencies used it to conduct Ebola research. The chimpanzees’ head caretaker, Joseph Thomas, who had worked with the animals since the 1970s, brought visiting scientists out on his boat to witness the chimps’ distress firsthand, and begged them for money to buy both food and the fuel needed to bring it to the animals. One of those scientists alerted the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).

The HSUS and a coalition of 40 organizations responded by trying to find someone to manage the chimps on-site and soon found that the short list of qualified people was short indeed, said Doug Cress, then the director of the United Nations’ Great Ape Survival Project. At the top of that list were Jim and [Dr. James Stephen Desmond (born 1971)]: Over fifteen years, they had cared for gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and other primates at eight sanctuaries in seven countries around the world. When several organizations came together to create a sanctuary for eastern lowland gorillas in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cress had recommended the Desmonds because they could whip up community support like no one else, even from such a remote facility: on top of a mountain, miles from the nearest city or airfield, the nearest neighbors often rebel armies. Just as important as that experience, Cress said, was that the couple knew when they’d need to adjust their approach for an entirely new climate.

Jim and Jenny Desmond are caring for 17 young chimps confiscated by the Forestry Development Authority, the government agency tasked with protecting wildlife and enforcing wildlife laws in Liberia. Photo: Jenny Desmond

But as it turned out, the plight of the former lab chimps wasn’t the only crisis to contend with in Liberia. During a five-week intervention Jim and Jenny undertook before signing on to the job, something unexpected happened: Locals brought them two infant chimps that had been kept as pets in deplorable conditions. Over time, more and more came in—today, 17 of them have been confiscated by the Forestry Development Authority, the government agency tasked with protecting wildlife and enforcing wildlife laws in Liberia. Most of the animals are only two or three years old, and all are victims of poachers illegally hunting adult chimpanzees for meat and selling their young offspring as pets. The orphaned chimps’ history is not just tragic; it’s also a troubling indicator of what lies ahead for western chimpanzees, a critically endangered subspecies that saw its numbers in the wild decline by 80 percent between 1990 and 2014.

The Desmonds came to understand that they were ideally situated to help combat the problem. First, they had the vast stores of experience they would need to help build a sanctuary for the chimps from the ground up. Second, they happened to be in one of the best possible places for such a sanctuary to be built. The years of unrest in Liberia has meant that much of the chimpanzees’ habitat there has been protected from development. Of the roughly thirty-five thousand western chimpanzees that still live in West Africa, seven thousand are estimated to inhabit this one small country. “It’s the only country in West Africa where large tracts of the Upper Guinean forests still remain intact,” Jim said.

So today, more than two years after setting foot in the war-torn nation, Jim and Jenny have no plans to leave. Liberia: Come for the desperate chimps abandoned on mangrove islands, stay for the desperate chimps orphaned by poachers—it’s not a pitch for a kind of life most people would find irresistible. But the Desmonds aren’t most people.

Anyone looking in from the outside would assume that Jim and Jenny have always worked in wildlife conservation. But Jim was a well-paid recent chemistry grad employed in pharma in 1994 when he met Jenny, who was leading trainings on large-scale fund-raising around the U.S. Within a year after meeting, the two married.

Their lives changed course on an around-the-world honeymoon. At an orangutan sanctuary in Borneo, Jim met [Dr. Annelisa Marcelle Kilbourn (born 1967)], V96, who was working with veterinarian [Dr. William Bamberger Karesh (born 1955)] and virologist [Dr. Nathan Daniel Wolfe (born 1970)] to look for diseases that great apes might pass on to humans and vice versa. (Kilbourn, whose research provided the first evidence that Ebola threatened wild gorillas, died in a 2002 plane crash [Linked to http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/nyregion/annelisa-m-kilbourn-35-dies-tied-ebola-to-death-of-gorillas.html , saved here as PDF : [HN020U][GDrive] ].) Jim couldn’t stop thinking about the encounter. If he could do the kind of work that Kilbourn was doing, he could apply his scientific mind to a cause he felt passionate about. But first he would need to go to veterinary school to build the proper foundation.

Jenny took the bold step of writing the famous primatologist Jane Goodall to ask for advice on how Jim might gain experience with African wildlife to strengthen his applications. “Jane’s assistant, the wonderful Mary Lewis, wrote me back with a personal message from Jane,” Jenny recalled. Goodall referred the couple to Debby Cox, then the director of the Jane Goodall Institute, who took them in as managers of the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre. “From that day forward,” Jenny said, “our lives were never the same.”

Jim was determined to go to Cummings School, and when he didn’t get in on his first try, he turned down an acceptance from another respected veterinary school to reapply. “If you wanted a different kind of career in veterinary medicine, Tufts was the place to go,” he said. After he was accepted to Cummings in 2003, he enrolled in a dual-degree program that allows students to earn a D.V.M. alongside a master’s in comparative biomedical sciences over five years. A Dr. Henry L. Foster Scholarship helped Jim pursue his new path by lessening some of his debt.

A year after graduating in 2008, Jim landed his dream job with EcoHealth Alliance, which conducts international research into the relationships between wildlife, ecosystems, and human health. For six years, he and Jenny spent months at a time in China, Indonesia, and Myanmar while Jim tested domestic animals for pathogens, conducted avian influenza surveillance, and investigated wildlife markets as sources of animal diseases that could spread to people. The Desmonds also became the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance’s go-to unit in times of crisis. “It just seemed there was no task too big for those two,” said Cress, who served as executive director for the association of primate rescue centers and sanctuaries across Africa.

A Dr. Henry L. Foster Scholarship helped [Dr. James Stephen Desmond (born 1971)] pursue a new path in wildlife veterinary medicine. Photo: Jenny Desmond

In 2015, the HSUS approached the couple, then working in Kenya, about the position in Liberia. “We didn’t say yes right away,” said Jim, explaining that they were happy in Kenya and had just been offered a job managing a conservation center there. But a five-week intervention turned into a yearlong contract with the HSUS, and then another.

Their work turned the situation around for the former lab chimps. The Desmonds not only made sure the animals got enough food; they corrected the unnatural feeding schedule that was causing so much stress. “The chimps were getting fed only every other day,” said Jim. Within a few months of daily feedings, the chimps were relaxed and coexisting peacefully, and now, said Jim, “they’ve put on weight and their coats have a glossy sheen.” Jim also instituted a much-needed—and so far successful—birth control plan. The chimpanzees were having babies, which was “really not a good situation,” he said, “because each new chimp will live fifty to sixty years in captivity.”

In May 2017, the HSUS came to an agreement with the blood center. The HSUS would assume lifetime care of the lab chimps, supported by $6 million from the blood center. Five months later, the Desmonds’ second consulting contract with the HSUS ended and was not renewed. They decided to stay in Liberia anyway. EcoHealth in November 2015 had tapped Jim to lead a new project there aimed at finding the species that keeps the Ebola virus circulating in nature between outbreaks in humans. And they were devoted to helping the orphaned wild chimpanzees.

The decision to stay in Liberia was not one they took lightly. “It would’ve been a lot more fun to stay in East Africa,” Jim said. In their five years living along Lake Victoria and the white sands of Diani Beach, the Desmonds frequently had friends and family visiting, and savannah safaris in national parks were only a short drive away. “We miss it sometimes,” Jim said. “But this is where we were meant to be, I think.”

In addition to the couple’s work with chimpanzees, Jim has had his hands full with his infectious disease research. The Liberia study seeks to test eighteen thousand bats for Ebola by the end of 2019, which has meant Jim has had to assemble the right research team: ten research technicians, two social scientists, an administrator, and five drivers. “The only non-Liberian who works on the project in Liberia is me,” Jim said. Given the brain drain that resulted from the country’s civil war, this “has been our biggest success so far.” He noted that the team operates independently, and “now the people we’ve trained can train other Liberians.”

Jonathan Epstein, V02, MG02, the associate vice president of conservation medicine at EcoHealth, said, “Jim is very committed to making sure that our local in-country team is both highly trained and also well mentored. He’s right there with them in the field and the office, teaching them about every aspect of the project from animal capture to sample storage to data management.” That’s important, Epstein said, because “ultimately, Liberia will have to be prepared to handle the next zoonotic disease outbreak, whether it’s Ebola or something entirely new.”

As for the sanctuary project, it’s well on its way. Recently, the Desmonds formally registered Liberia Chimpanzee Rescue and Protection as a Liberian NGO—the country’s first and only sanctuary for wild chimpanzee victims of the bushmeat and pet trades. The orphaned chimpanzees currently live on the grounds of the National Public Health Institute of Liberia, where the couple cared for the former lab chimps. Jim and Jenny hope to remain there for up to a year while they raise money. Leveraging Jenny’s grant-writing experience, they’re applying for funding and hoping to establish a trust overseen by board members from local and international animal-welfare and conservation organizations. Their first goal will be to lease a parcel of community land they’ve identified. “Right now, our sanctuary consists of a bunch of enclosures with outside play areas and full-time caregivers,” explained Jim. “But hopefully we will be able to move soon and build the infrastructure so the chimps can play out in the forest.”

The effects could be far-reaching. A 2013 International Fund for Animal Welfare report found that the illegal wildlife trade internationally generates an estimated $19 billion per year—globally, it is organized crime’s fourth most lucrative activity, behind narcotics, counterfeiting, and human trafficking. Sanctuaries are invaluable in the fight against such activities, because without them, officials don’t know what to do with any animals they might confiscate. “Since African governments generally don’t have facilities to care for live wildlife, law enforcement officials tend not to arrest animal traffickers,” said Gregg Tully, executive director of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance. “We’ve found that wildlife law enforcement is typically weaker in countries that don’t have sanctuaries. Liberia was one of these countries until Jim and Jenny Desmond began to rescue confiscated chimpanzees.”

Jim also believes Liberia’s new sanctuary could contribute to public health and safety throughout the world. “There is a live great ape trade, and some of these orphaned chimps could’ve been shipped off to China or the Middle East,” which could spread diseases like Ebola far beyond Liberia’s borders, he said. “And it’s not like these traffickers only specialize in animals; they also traffic in drugs, guns, and humans. If we can help break up the networks, we are not only protecting wildlife, but also doing a lot to disrupt organized crime groups funding terrorist networks and other activities.”

Much work remains to be done, but there are encouraging signs. Liberia passed a wildlife law at the end of 2016, and a group is now writing the regulations that will govern its implementation. And Jenny, who serves on a law-enforcement task force, has written grant applications for money to train the Forestry Development Authority on fighting trafficking activities.

The work is not easy and is often exhausting. Jim and Jenny don’t mind, though. “It’s exciting to know that what you’re doing can have a big impact,” Jim said. “We’re super busy, but happy.”

In March 2015, the New York Blood Center (NYBC) abandoned sixty-six chimpanzees, some of whom they’d been experimenting on for more than thirty years. They left them on uninhabited islands in Liberia, Africa, without food or fresh water. The chimpanzees — who had been forced to endure invasive, painful experiments and had been injected with HIV, hepatitis, and West Nile viruses — were left to die. An American researcher who was in Liberia to address the Ebola virus crisis saw what was happening to the chimpanzees and called on friends in the United States for help. A coalition of more than thirty-five animal welfare and conservation organizations joined forces. Together with animal rights activists, they launched a global campaign demanding that NYBC honor its commitment to provide for the individuals it had discarded. When NYBC refused, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) stepped in with a fundraising campaign and hired Jenny and Jim Desmond to oversee the chimpanzees’ care.

I first learned about Jenny while reading about the Liberian chimpanzees in an article written by Karen Lange in All Animals magazine. Wanting to know more, I reached out to Jenny, and over lengthy emails, we bonded.

Jenny’s connection with chimpanzees began when she was seven years old and her mother gave her Jane Goodall’s first book, My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees. Her mother inscribed it: “To my very own little Jane Goodall.” Shortly after that, Jenny announced to her uncle that when she grew up she planned to live in the jungle with monkeys.

Jenny spent her childhood in Manhattan Beach, California, where she ran around the house on all fours wanting to be an animal. Her parents, though not animal lovers the way she was, still nurtured her love for and connection with animals. However, when the number of rescue animals living in the house reached an all-time high of twenty-two, Jenny and her animals moved into a cabana behind the house.

Jenny’s dream of working with animals came true unexpectedly. She met a man in Boston, and they went on an around-the-world backpacking adventure. Then, in Africa, they were asked to parent an orphaned chimpanzee they named Matooke, and they both found their calling.

• • •

Entebbe, Uganda

I wanted a career where I could be around animals. There were plenty of options, but none of them worked for me. I didn’t want to work in a zoo because I couldn’t stand seeing caged animals. The obvious choice of veterinarian was off the table because I’d passed out three times at the vet clinic when my animals were being treated. I am definitely not a math and science person, but I still decided to study wildlife biology in college. When I realized it was all science and that job opportunities included positions like game park ranger (deciding on numbers of hunting licenses to issue each year), researcher (I am not a patient observer), or working in a lab (yuck!), that option flew out the window. I guess I gave up on an animal-related career at that point.

I ended up changing my major to social work, moving to Boston after school, and working in sales and marketing. That’s when I met Jimmy Desmond at a brewery. Jimmy was a chemist. We connected over a mutual love for beer, parties, and socializing with friends. It was pretty much love at first sight. It wasn’t until we got married and took an around-the-world backpacking trip that our journey with wildlife began.

It had always been a dream of mine to see great apes in the wild. So, on that trip, we visited orangutans at the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre on the island of Borneo, Malaysia. The experience was so exciting, we ended up volunteering there and working with veterinarian Annelisa Kilbourn. Jimmy became so enthralled with her work rescuing great apes and studying disease transmission between humans and other apes that he realized he wanted to become a veterinarian. At the same time, I was introduced to the world of wildlife rescue, rehabilitation, and conservation of wild populations and found my path. I suddenly saw there was a way for me to put my passion for animals to use. It was a true sign of fate. We had no intention of doing what we do today, and yet we met, fell in love, got married, and embarked on a journey around the world together. It is only on that trip that we found our way at the same time as one.

To get some experience as wildlife rehabilitators, I wrote to Jane Goodall for advice, and to my surprise, she wrote back! She connected us with our now dear friend Debby Cox, and we ended up in Uganda, Africa, managing a rhino reintroduction and sanctuary program at Uganda Wildlife Education Centre [UWEC] in Entebbe. And that’s where we met Matooke.

UWEC works with the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary and has chimps on-site, as well as rhinoceros. They take in wildlife confiscated by authorities and rehabilitate and release the animals when it’s possible.

One day we were called to pick up a male eastern chimpanzee who, we were told, was in poor condition. We didn’t know his history. We guessed his mother was killed, likely for bush meat, because a mother chimpanzee will never willingly give up her child. By his condition and age — estimated between two and three years old — we suspected he’d been taken as an infant and kept as a “pet” for one or two years in a village. We found him in awful condition. He was in a dog crate, sitting in his own feces and urine, with a lot of hair loss. He was extremely thin and very depressed. Usually chimps like this have come from villages where they haven’t been nurtured, fed, or treated well and end up physically sick and mentally unstable. He was in very bad shape, and his sadness was clear in his eyes.

When the young chimpanzee was reported to UWEC and the Ngamba Sanctuary, there was no one on-site available to care for him. He needed to be nurtured and quarantined for three months. We were asked if we would be willing to take him and give him around-the- clock care. We agreed, and our adventure with him began.

We took the little boy, still in the dog crate, to the inside of our hut at the back of the rescue center. He was no different than a traumatized human child who’d witnessed the murder of his family, been kidnapped, then been held captive and teased for years. In addition, this had been done to him by a different species, one he didn’t know or understand. He was devastated and did not trust anyone, including me. Jimmy and I took on the role of father and mother for him, and as we saw it, our job was to bring him back to life.

He wouldn’t come out of the crate, let me touch him, or take much food or water from me. The only type of food he would eat was a fruit similar to a banana called matooke, so that’s what we named him. For nearly a week, he sat at the back of the crate, and I lay at the front with the door open. Hours and hours passed, and then days and days. It took four days before he let me touch him. It took another two days before he came out of the crate. The day he came out, he let me embrace him and that was that. We connected spiritually, emotionally, and telepathically. We bonded for life.

One day, Matooke accidentally rolled down a hill, and it made me laugh. I watched him register that I had laughed. Then he went right back up and did it again and again and again. He understood he was funny and that it was fun to make someone laugh. Before long, his sense of humor became apparent. He loved being tickled and playing games, and he loved to laugh.

Matooke also loved playing tricks on the dogs who lived on the property. He’d play chase with them and then run up a tree where they clearly couldn’t follow — and then laugh his head off. At night, he often wanted to go to bed before I did. So he’d climb halfway up the ladder to our loft and make crying sounds until I caved and joined him.

After the three-month quarantine period, where he was only allowed to be with us, we began introducing Matooke to other chimpanzees. His new family was comprised of a ragtag group of individuals from various backgrounds. They had been rescued from roadside zoos, poachers, being used as entertainment, and the pet trade. It took a month of bringing him to spend time with the group for the day, then bringing him home with us at night, before he made a choice. One night he decided to stay with his new chimp family instead of coming home with us. He definitely chose to leave us, and it was a great moment.

The fact that, in the end, he chose to be with his own kind was a beautiful and important thing to see and understand. He wanted to be with people who spoke his language, knew who he was and what he was about, and could truly meet his needs and wants. Just like any one of us, he wanted choice, freedom, love, understanding, and dignity.

Matooke is living happily in Uganda at UWEC with a large chimp family. Every time we visit him, he transforms from a big, tough, alpha male to a playful, silly, happy boy. He wants to laugh, be tickled, and play chase, just like before. He has grown up and become a confident, strong, and fulfilled individual.

Matooke changed my life and the life of my husband. He sealed the deal. We were clearly on a path to work with wildlife at the time, but he made it all crystal clear. After knowing him, whenever I saw pictures of little chimp faces in tiny metal boxes in research labs, I saw him. He made all the experiments on animals real. There was no question in either of our minds that we had to act on our love for him, to help others. It was a true epiphany, and there was no turning back once it happened.

• • •

Jenny and her husband, veterinarian Jim Desmond, are the founders of Liberia Chimpanzee Rescue and Protection (LCRP), the first and only chimpanzee sanctuary in Liberia, Africa. They rescue and rehabilitate chimpanzees who are victims of the bush meat and pet trades in that country.

In addition, Jenny and Jim, working with local and international partners, helped create Liberia’s first law enforcement task force and public awareness campaign on wildlife trafficking. Their goals are far-reaching and include developing education awareness efforts to combat the trade of chimpanzees, which continues in Liberia. In their work, they seek to create partnerships with international organizations and country government agencies to develop and support the sanctuary’s facilities and programs. Active locally, they have established successful vaccination and spay/neuter programs. When he’s not napping with chimpanzees, Jim is a researcher in emerging disease.

As a footnote, in 2017, the HSUS reached a financial agreement with NYBC to help provide for the continuing care of the remaining sixty-three chimpanzees it abandoned on islands in Liberia. Humane Society International now oversees the project and has committed to care for the chimpanzees for the rest of their lives.

MONKEY ISLAND, Liberia — All was quiet when the motorboat puttered to a stop. Saltwater lapped at the narrow sandy shore. Mangrove leaves fluttered in the breeze. Then the man in a blue life jacket cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, Hoo hoo!

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Like a secret password, the call unlocked a hidden primate universe. Dozens of chimpanzees emerged from the brush, hairy arms extended. They waded up to the rusty vessel with the nonchalance of someone fetching the mail.

“Time to eat,” said Joseph Thomas, their wiry guardian of 40 years, tossing bananas into the furry crowd.

Chimps aren’t supposed to be stuck on their own island — especially one with no food — or mingle with much-weaker humans. But nothing about Liberia’s Monkey Island is normal. It’s a spectacle, an increasingly costly burden and the enduring legacy of American scientists who set out to cure hepatitis B in 1974.

Animal testing has existed since doctors in ancient Greece studied the anatomy of rodents — an estimated 115 million creatures are still used each year in research worldwide — but rarely is the aftermath so visible. Rarely is it so hungry.

This colony of 66 chimpanzees, which never learned to survive in the wild, eats about 500 pounds of produce each day, plus a weekly batch of hard-boiled eggs for protein. They rely on money from a charity abroad and the devotion of men who’ve known them since they lived in steel cages.

“That’s Mabel,” said Thomas, the captain of that small crew, pointing to a 100-pound female. “Look! She likes to wash her food in the water.”

As if on cue, Mabel dunked her banana in the mud-brown river.

Thomas, 60, met the chimp, 36, when she was a baby who pressed the soft black pads of her fingers into his open palm.

The New York researchers who once injected her with ­viruses quit the country during the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, abandoning Mabel and other animals who can live half a century.

Thomas hadn’t planned to devote his life to protecting chimps through epidemic and civil war. Risk hangs over interactions with the brawny animals, who might still carry disease. The caretaker trusts they won’t hurt him because they know him.

For the past 40 years, Joseph Thomas has been caring for chimpanzees that were infected with hepatitis on Monkey Island, Liberia. (Danielle Paquette/The Washington Post)

His long, strange mission started on the tennis court. He dreamed of becoming a professional athlete until he met a researcher from the New York Blood Center. She would give him a job, he said, if he could give her tennis lessons.

At age 20, Thomas became a caretaker at the nonprofit organization’s chimp laboratory in remote Robertsville. He fed the animals, cleaned up after them and got to know their personalities, which ranged from shy to class clown.

He was promoted four years later to medical technician. The chimps were infected with hepatitis and river blindness, an eye sickness caused by a parasite, as researchers developed vaccines.

Chimp testing doesn’t happen anymore. They hate to be cooped up. They laugh, cry, get jealous and have temper tantrums — “just like us,” Thomas said.

He tended to the animals like they were his children. He hoped the experiments would ease suffering in West Africa and beyond. The New York Blood Center set up shop in Liberia because chimps — now considered an endangered species — were already climbing the trees of its dense forests.

No one expected the lab to tumble into chaos.

In the early 1990s, Charles Taylor — the rebel leader who would become Liberia’s 22nd president and later a convicted war criminal — unleashed his ragtag army across the country, killing thousands and forcing untold others from their homes.

The American researchers fled. Thomas stayed behind with the chimps. Taylor’s soldiers, he said, stole the lab’s cars.

Conflict surged into the 2000s as militants fought for control of Liberia, and public pressure to end testing on chimps snowballed. The New York Blood Center halted tests in 2004, sparking a big question: What would they do with all the animals?

Putting them back into the nation’s forests wasn’t an option. They could spread disease to others through body fluids, and they didn’t know how to pick fruit or hunt insects.

Another problem arose from their artificial comfort zone. What if the chimps heard the familiar sound of people talking — or poachers talking — and ambled out to say hi?

“The only way to hold them was to put them on an island,” Thomas said.

There are six islands in the Farmington and Little Bassa rivers. These makeshift sanctuaries on the Atlantic coast became collectively known as Monkey Island.

Chimpanzees that live on Monkey Island wade into the water to catch food thrown to them by a team of caretakers. (Danielle Paquette/The Washington Post)

Thomas and the other caretakers collected funds from New York to deliver the chimps buckets of bananas and lettuce, among other goods, every two days. A veterinarian stayed on the group’s payroll to check on the animals.

In 2009, the New York Blood Center said it was getting hard to pay for Monkey Island. The charity contacted Liberia’s then-president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, for help and received no reply, its spokeswoman told The Washington Post. (A spokesman for Sirleaf declined to comment.)

By 2015, as the Ebola virus ravaged the country, the New York Blood Center notified the Liberian government that it could “no longer divert funds from its important lifesaving mission here at home,” a spokeswoman said in a recent statement.

Thomas stuck to the feeding schedule until the last penny was gone.

He went with the other caretakers from fruit stall to fruit stall, seeking donations — a daunting task in a time of epidemic. One particularly generous neighbor gave him 50 pieces of coconut. The men gathered enough food to keep the chimps alive if not full for a few weeks.

During that period, Thomas remembers pulling up to islands and seeing frantic, desperate animals. They screamed and fought over scraps. It wasn’t enough.

He told the story to whoever would listen, he said, and eventually found a sympathetic ear with connections to Humane Society International in Washington.

The nonprofit group has since bankrolled the care, spending about $500,000 annually on Monkey Island. Meals now happen twice a day. The price grows, though, as the colony does. (Facing backlash, the New York Blood Center agreed to pay the Humane Society $6 million in 2017. At the time, the Humane Society estimated the total cost of caring for the chimps to be $17 million.)

Despite the team of 10 caretakers’ best family-planning efforts, which include vasectomies for males and slipping birth control in sugary milk paste, the chimps have had a few babies. “Very cute accidents,” Humane Society chief executive Kitty Block said.

Over the years, Monkey Island has become a local legend, though some news articles have painted the inhabitants as infectious threats.

“A bunch of ‘monster’ Chimps are living on their own island in a Planet of the Apes meets Resident Evil-style scenario,” read one news story published on an Australian news site.

Thomas rolls his eyes.

The public should stay away from animals that might get spooked and attack, he said.

The caretakers dream of building an animal hospital on one of the sanctuaries, as well as a proper security system to keep people away. As of now, one man sits on a small dock off each island, telling onlookers to scram.

That doesn’t stop fishermen from floating over for a peek, and guidebooks from irresponsibly advising tourists to hitch a ride.

No one can get as close as Thomas. Photos show him standing knee-deep in river water, hugging the chimps he sees as family.

He greets them by name: Mabel. Stuart. Juno. Ellyse. Annie.

“I’ll be doing this,” he said, “until they die or I do.”