November 12, 2024 By Merritt Clifton 5 Comments
Forty-three rhesus macaques made a jailbreak, but then didn’t know where to go, or how
YEMASSEE, North Carolina–– Eighteen of forty-three young female rhesus macaques who escaped on November 6, 2024 from an Alpha Genesis research colony in Yemassee, South Carolina remained at large through the Veterans Day weekend, but 25 had been recaptured.
Animal rights lawyers Angela Fernandez and Justin Marceau argued in a November 11, 2024 guest column for Vox that the macaques “have a legal claim to freedom,” based on U.S. and Canadian case law governing wildlife who escape from private possession.
Fernandez and Marceau overlooked, however, that their cited precedents pertain to native North American wildlife, fully capable of surviving in the wild habitat to which they escaped, and that the Alpha Genesis macaques have arguably not even left Alpha Genesis property, depending on the width of the buffer zone between the monkey facilities and neighboring property.
“Hanging out in the trees”
“Most of the monkeys are hanging out in the trees in the forest just beyond the facility’s fence line,” Island Packet reporters Chloe Appleby and Karl Puckett recounted, going into the weekend.
The escaped monkeys “continued to communicate” with seven others who did not join the escape after a worker left two doors unlocked while she was cleaning and feeding the colony, Alpha Genesis chief executive Greg Westergaard told Appleby and Puckett.
“I can hear them at night. They make this little cooing sound. I can hear their little conversations going back and forth,” Westergaard said.
Fruit-baited traps
Westergaard hoped to recapture the 43 rhesus macaques with fruit-baited traps, a technique that so far seems to be working. The young macaques had no previous experience with living outdoors, or finding their own food, and the area is not rich in wild food sources at this time of year.
The Yemassee area does support a healthy raccoon population. Rhesus macaques and raccoons share omnivorous food habits, but the local raccoons, already knowing the local food sources, have a considerable foraging advantage over the macaques.
“The idea is you wait for them to miss their buddies and the treats and they will wander back,” Westergaard said, but added that the macaques would be shot with tranquilizer darts if they elude the traps and do not return voluntarily.
So far, tranquilizer darting has not been needed.
“Monkey Island”
Alpha Genesis originated as a Labs of Virginia facility on Morgan Island, South Carolina, in the St Helena Sound near Beaufort, known locally as “Monkey Island,” occupied by feral macaques brought from Puerto Rico in 1979-1980.
The state of South Carolina bought Morgan Island in 2002.
` Westergaard formed Alpha Genesis and took over the breeding operation, housing 3,500 macaques, in 2003.
Currently, Appleby and Puckett reported, “Alpha Genesis manages three primate facilities in the Lowcountry. There are 4,000 monkeys at the main facility in Yemassee, where the escape occurred. A second facility on 80 acres” houses 3,000.
Alpha Genesis “also manages another 3,000 monkeys for the National Institutes of Health on Morgan Island,” Appleby and Puckett learned.
Previous escapes
CBS News reported that the 43 escaped monkeys were recently transferred from Morgan Island to the mainland Yemassee facility to become acclimated to humans before being sold to laboratories.
Alpha Genesis has had previous mass macaque escapes from the mainland locations. Notably, 26 escaped in 2014, but were recaptured within 48 hours. Another 19 escaped in 2016, but again were recaptured.
Only one macaque is known to have escaped from Morgan’s Island. That macaque was later recaptured on Lady’s Island, about five miles away.
The Labs of Virginia macaque-breeding operation became controversial after a seven-year investigation initiated in 1997 by International Primate Protection League founder Shirley McGreal, of Summerville, South Carolina, after McGreal “received an eyewitness report from a person who had seen dozens of pathetic baby monkeys in crates at O Hare Airport in Chicago,” she told ANIMALS 24-7.
(See International Primate Protection League founder Shirley McGreal, 87)
12-count indictment of former owner
A federal grand jury on April 14, 2002 returned a 12-count indictment for illegally importing wild-caught monkeys against Labs of Virginia, Inc., former Labs president David M. Taub, Labs board chair Charles J. Stern, and Labs board member William Curtis Henley, 43.
Taub and Labs of Virginia were each charged with eight felonies and four misdemeanors.
The federal indictments alleged that between February 20, 1997 and May 30, 1997, Labs of Virginia flew to the U.S. in four groups a breeding colony of 1,312 macaques purchased from Indonesian Aquatics Export CV, called Inquatex.
Fined $500,000
However, the transaction and import documents allegedly misrepresented wild-caught macaques as captive-bred; the wild-caught macaques were not legally exported from Indonesia; and from 17 to 19 macaques were improperly brought to the U.S. while nursing unweaned young.
Taub––who had been mayor of Beaufort, South Carolina, from 1991 to 1999––in December 2004 settled the case by pleading guilty to illegally importing 846 of the monkeys.
Labs of Virginia was also fined $500,000 as part of the plea bargain.
Alpha Genesis, which had acquired the macaque breeding operation in the interim, accepted a two-year probation.
Charles River Laboratories case
The Labs of Virginia case paralleled the current U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service case against Charles River Laboratories and Inotiv (formerly Orient BioResource Center, also involving Worldwide Primates, whose founder, Matthew Block, was convicted of wildlife trafficking in 1992 after another seven-year investigation by Shirley McGreal.
One defendant in the Charles River case, Masphal Kry, 48, deputy minister of the Cambodian Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries, was acquitted after a jury trial on March 25, 2024.
The acquittal was apparently because the case, initiated by the British organization Cruelty Free International, relied heavily on illegally obtained evidence provided by informant Veng Lim Yeung.
Macaques now routed through Quebec
Yeung, a Chinese citizen then employed by the Cambodian monkey breeding company Vanny Bio Research, was paid $224,000 and resettled in the U.S. in exchange for his testimony.
Charles River Laboratories meanwhile rerouted macaque traffic from Cambodia into facilities located in Laval and Sherbrooke, Quebec province, Canada.
Charles River Laboratories imports of macaques into Quebec increased from 1,030 in 2022 to 4,789 in 2023, Montreal Gazette reporter Michelle Lalonde revealed on November 8, 2024.
Greg Westergaard with cane toad. (Facebook photo)
“All those people are long gone”
The 2004 Alpha Genesis plea bargain involved the company as it existed in 1997,” Alpha Genesis president Greg Westergaard told media at the time.
“Rest assured, all those people are long gone,” Westergaard said.
But Alpha Genesis has had another set of recurring issues, repeatedly raised by Stop Animal Exploitation Now [SAEN], of Dayton, Ohio, after reviewing USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service inspection reports.
“In 2008, the USDA cleared the lab of abuse allegations after SAEN cofounder Michael Budkie claimed some of the thousands of animals at the site were missing fingers and toes, saying they found no evidence of mistreatment,” Associated Press reported.
Two female macaques, one with baby, on the lam from Alpha Genesis in Yemassee, South Carolina.
(Yemassee police department photo)
Repeated SAEN complaints
In April 2010 SAEN alleged that, “From November 2008 to March 2009, about a half-dozen primates[at Alpha Genesis] died of hypothermia,” and that “171 primates lost a body part, ranging from fingers to tails and limbs, as a result of trauma,” apparently from fighting.
In November 2015, SAEN said, “Federal reports from August of 2015 reveal two juvenile monkeys were killed after Alpha Genesis staff negligently returned them to incorrect enclosures, causing fatal conflicts.
This came after, “In May 2015, two Alpha Genesis primates escaped, and one was killed during attempts to recapture the animal. Another monkey had a limb fracture as a result of mishandling, and when Alpha Genesis staff failed to come to work, monkeys were denied food and medication.
“In February of 2015 one monkey died of dehydration and five others required treatment when Alpha Genesis negligence left the animals without water for six days.
“Another monkey was reported to have required partial tail amputation in late 2014.
Merritt & Beth Clifton with Henry the rooster.
Eventually Alpha Genesis Inc. was fined $12,600 for those incidents and another reportedly occurring in February 2016.
SAEN in July 2020 further charged that six monkeys in 12 months had died from “crush” injuries and four from sepsis infections of wounds.
Exposing the Big Game 
