Chimps’ deaths put sanctuary in spotlight
Infighting, welfare violations run rampant
When Tiffany and Tuffy became too much for a Missouri man to handle, he surrendered his chimpanzee pets to live the rest of their lives at Save the Chimps in Florida.
The chimps, ages 13 and 24, did not get to join the family groups roaming freely on 12 islands at the 150-acre sanctuary west of Fort Pierce. With various underlying health problems, Tiffany and Tuffy were housed in an outdoor special-needs enclosure when they arrived in April 2018.
Four months later, Tiffany was euthanized, having lost a third of her weight because she would not eat, an investigation by Treasure Coast Newspapers, part of the USA TODAY Network, found. Her liver was failing, her muscles were rupturing, she had pneumonia and her breathing was labored, medical records show.
Tuffy had lost 10% of his weight. The last time he was weighed six months ago, he had lost another 1.5%, according to a sanctuary representative’s email earlier this month.
Tiffany’s case sparked a power struggle between the care and medical departments over how to save her, according to internal documents Treasure Coast Newspapers obtained exclusively. The turmoil is also evident in multiple whistleblower complaints, six federal animal welfare inspections and the entire medical staff ’s eventual resignations.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which blamed the sanctuary for inadequate care, has cited Save the Chimps for 12 violations of the Animal Welfare Act over the past five years. Three were critical violations for medical care.
No other chimp sanctuary had that many violations in the same time frame, and none had any critical violations, according to the USDA’s online database. Save the Chimps is billed as the largest privately funded nonprofit sanctuary of its kind in the world, with about 60 employees caring for about 230 chimps.
The sanctuary lauded how the care staff “took wonderful care of Tiffany” but blamed the vets. Save the Chimps would not give Treasure Coast Newspapers Tiffany’s full medical records nor her University of Florida necropsy report, citing the chimp’s medical privacy.
Jon Stryker, board chairman and billionaire philanthropist of the sanctuary – which financial records show has operated in the red for seven of the past eight years – was still trying to contain the fallout four months after Tiffany’s death.
“I would ask that we not start pointing fingers – a completely unproductive use of our time – all of Tiffany’s caregivers had the very best intentions,” he wrote in a letter to the staff and board. “What we need to do is learn from what happened to help inform a new Philosophy of Care program set of procedures at StC that will help ensure no chimp goes through an ordeal like this again.”
Multiple USDA violations
Tiffany’s case was the boiling point in a long-simmering conflict. The medical staff accused the care staff of ignoring instructions and creating obstacles to them doing their jobs, records show.
One veterinarian resigned the day before Tiffany’s death. The other quit the next month. All four vet technicians quit within a year. For six months, the sanctuary called outside vets until partially restaffing in 2019.
Multiple whistleblowers complained to the USDA and Animal Welfare Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group that acted as liaison because the tipsters requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. USDA inspection reports show critical violations for:
❚ Not giving Tiffany the medical care she needed.
❚ Not treating 26-year-old Nigida for a toe that was “dangling” with exposed bone he chewed on for two days before staff called an outside vet; the in-house vets had quit. The vet said it will “come off on its own” and gave him drugs for pain and infection.
❚ Delaying a dying chimp’s euthanasia because the medical department was short-staffed.
The USDA also cited the care staff for:
❚ Improperly feeding Tuffy, who dropped from 156 pounds to 138 at last weigh-in
❚ Caging two incompatible chimps next to each other until 22-year-old Capone ripped a 5-inch chunk of flesh from 17-year-old Jude’s thigh.
Tension among the staff
Throughout Treasure Coast Newspapers’ three-month investigation, Save the Chimps denied wrongdoing. But in a missive posted on its website late last month, it admits many failures, calls Tiffany’s death “a catalyst for bold change,” and emphasizes that veterinarians make the medical decisions.
The nearly 3,000-word defense contains multiple factual errors, according to records Treasure Coast Newspapers obtained.
“There were differing opinions from staff on what should be done regarding her treatment,” it says. “As Tiffany’s health and appetite declined, tensions amongst staff increased, especially senior staff.”
USDA records indicate Dr. Amber Callaway Lewis announced her resignation the day before Tiffany was euthanized. The veterinarian declined to comment to Treasure Coast Newspapers, saying she signed a confidentiality agreement.
“I do not want to belabor my resignation, but I do want you to know that Tiffany’s care is the final incident over the last several months that has led to my decision to resign,” says an Aug. 18 email in the USDA’s files. The recipient’s name is redacted.
The email further expresses frustration with “medical recommendations from nonmedical professionals” and cites frequent disagreements with the care staff, led by Andrew Halloran since 2016. “I spoke with [name redacted] about the concerns for her [Tiffany] not eating,” the email says, “and his response was, ‘Well, sometimes chimps just starve themselves to death.’”
The other vet, Dr. Jocelyn Bezner, also resigned in protest, she told Treasure Coast Newspapers in an email, without answering further questions because of her confidentiality agreement. “STC was going through changes to improve its organizational matrix in order to continue to provide exemplary care for the chimpanzees,” she wrote. “Somehow, they lost sight of what was most important, their newest residents Tiffany and Tuffy.”
An Animal Welfare Institute representative declined to comment, but the nonprofit sounded an alarm in its December 2018 letter to the USDA.
“Halloran has been cited by multiple sources as central to these serious issues,” the letter says, adding he ultimately was responsible for Tiffany’s feeding and Jude’s housing. “If these allegations are true, then the situation at STC is dire.”
The sanctuary’s internal review of Tiffany’s death exonerates Halloran’s
care staff and says Bezner ultimately was responsible for her care. The sanctuary would not give Treasure Coast Newspapers the full document, only an excerpt, citing personnel privacy.
Saying she was quoting a USDA finding in the internal review, sanctuary spokeswoman Lisa Djahed said, “That there was a ‘failure to maintain a program of adequate veterinary care’ lies with Dr. Bezner, the attending veterinarian who failed to carry out the plan she authored and to which she attested.”
Bezner told Treasure Coast Newspapers her record speaks for itself, having rehabilitated more than 320 chimps in the past 15 years at the sanctuary, including 19 former residents like Tiffany and Tuffy.
Regulators backtrack
The USDA found the vets had not “been provided with appropriate authority” and “other non-veterinary departments rejected medical decisions throughout the chimpanzees’ first 4-5 months at the sanctuary,” its report from a February 2019 inspection says.
After Save the Chimps appealed, the USDA changed its report in May 2019 to remove accusations against non-veterinary staff and to say “limited veterinary involvement ... demonstrates a failure to maintain a program of adequate veterinary care.”
Another USDA record states “veterinarians were only able to have limited involvement in Tiffany’s case,” but it does not expound on the limitations and who or what caused them.
“Let me be clear on this point,” Halloran told Treasure Coast Newspapers. “Our veterinarians were, and are, in charge of all dietary decisions. At no point did I or any of my staff interfere with Tiffany’s veterinary care.”
The USDA changed its report “based on information considered from the appeal,” agency spokesman Andre Bell said, without explaining or providing the appeal, which Treasure Coast Newspapers was still trying to obtain.
The Animal Welfare Act, the law under which Save the Chimps is a licensed exhibitor, is less of an anti-cruelty law and more of a licensing program, said David Favre, professor of animal law and editor of the Animal Legal & Historical Center at Michigan State University.
“The basic idea is that it’s light regulation, that there’s not a vigorous enforcer of the laws,” he said.
In theory, the USDA can revoke licenses and shut down sanctuaries, but it typically works with facilities to bring them into compliance and, at worst, fines them, Favre said. The USDA did not fine Save the Chimps.
Second opinions
For its internal review, Save the Chimps hired Dr. Ellen Wiedner, a veterinary pathologist at the University of Miami School of Medicine, to assess Tiffany’s care.
“I am struck by the lack of records,” Wiedner wrote in her report in December 2018. “But an absence of written records may not necessarily mean that there was an absence of action.”
It does mean Wiedner could not determine to what extent Tiffany’s underlying health problems contributed to her death. She listed metabolic bone disease, low phosphorus levels and the Epstein-Barr virus, among other ailments.
“What I can say with certainty is that this animal was not normal when she arrived. … Tiffany had a number of strikes against her. … Stress associated with transportation may simply have been the final straw for her,” Wiedner said.
One symptom of Epstein-Barr is unexplained weight loss, Wiedner wrote, and the sanctuary’s website says it “is often the kiss of death,” citing Science magazine. The virus is prevalent in chimps, but severe illness from it is rare, according to Dr. Ed Ramsay, professor of zoological medicine at the University of Tennessee.
Ramsay said Wiedner’s analysis was fair overall. “I might not lean as heavily on metabolic bone disease” as a contributing factor, he said, stressing that his opinion was based on the limited medical records the sanctuary provided.
Whatever the reason, Tiffany refused to eat – even when the care staff tempted her with Coke and fast food – and she went from 122 pounds to 81 pounds a week before her death.
“Any animal that loses that much weight,” Ramsay said, “something catastrophic is going on.”
‘We failed our staff’
After Tiffany’s death, Halloran wrote a Chimp Care Policy Manual that formalizes the sanctuary’s protocols, including one significant change: The veterinarian must be notified when any chimp refuses to eat more than one meal.
“Another way we failed our staff ... was not being clear on who is responsible for decisions,” the sanctuary’s website says. “We didn’t have a protocol in place for transparently sharing information.”
Today, the “leadership and structure are dramatically different.”
Executive Director Michelle “Shelly” Lakly was hired in September to replace Molly Polidoroff, who left three months after Tiffany died. Dr. Valerie Kirk now leads the medical staff. Djahed said Halloran “remains a treasured and respected member of our senior team.”
The sanctuary also hired a human resources director but laid off eight employees in 2019. According to financial records, the sanctuary spent:
❚ $1.4 million more than it raised in 2016.
❚ $1.7 million more in 2017.
❚ $2 million more in 2018.
Six behavior employees and both kitchen employees were let go. Volunteers now order and prepare the chimps’ food, Lakly said. Despite relying on much of its cash reserves to stay afloat, Lakly said, the sanctuary can take care of all its chimps.
The USDA’s latest annual inspection in June found no uncorrected violations and says the new veterinarian has the “appropriate authority” to provide medical care as she sees fit.
“There is no question that Tiffany’s medical case was challenging,” the sanctuary’s website says. “It is clear looking back now, where we failed as an organization.”