Coulston primates gain new freedoms

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - The Great Chimp Migration from a research lab in Alamogordo to their new home more than 1,000 miles away is complete.

For years, hundreds of chimps called the infamous Building 300 in Alamogordo home.

To workers it's known as the dungeon, for chimps it was prison.

Rows of cells housed the primates used for research by Doctor Frederick Coulston and his group.

They were subjected to everything from vaccine and pesticide testing to experimental surgeries which was all legal at the time but conditions at the lab were not.

It all came to an end when the federal government filed animal cruelty charges.

In 2002, a multi-million dollar grant allowed Save the Chimps to buy the facility and begin the Great Chimp Migration..

Almost 300 chimpanzees have moved from their cages in New Mexico at the former Coulston Research Facility on LaVelle Road in Alamogordo to Florida islands built especially for them.

The last group left just weeks before Christmas. After traveling for almost two thousand miles the final 10 arrived.

The chimps were released into their new housing a day later.

None had ever before been free, or even touched grass.

After reuniting with the rest of their family group, they were finally home.

Sixteen of the chimps used in the Alamogordo research lab are survivors and descendants of the original NASA chimp astronaut program.