The move was a long time in the works, a response to a petition filed in 2010 by the Humane Society of the United States, the Jane Goodall Institute and other groups with concerns about biomedical research on chimpanzees and the use of the animals in advertisements and entertainment. 
 
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 Dr. Goodall, who joined Mr. Ashe in announcing the proposed ruling in a conference call, said the move was an important step forward in the effort “to conserve these extraordinary beings in their home.” 
 
 Kathleen Conlee, the vice president of animal research issues of the Humane Society of the United States, said, “This an amazing step forward towards protecting chimpanzees in laboratories.” 
 
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 If enacted, the new listing would affect not only medical research but also the import or export of chimps and the sale of chimps in interstate commerce. It would not affect people who own chimps as pets. Whether the use of chimps in entertainment could be regulated is an issue that will be discussed during the comment period, Mr. Ashe said. 
 
 Over the past few years, the movement to stop invasive research on chimpanzees has gained force. The National Institutes of Health decided in December 2011 to suspend all new grants for medical and behavioral experiments on chimpanzees. And in January, a committee recommended the retirement of the about 450 N.I.H. chimps. 
 
 A 60-day comment period on those recommendations ended in March, and animal welfare groups have been awaiting a final decision. One problem in enacting the recommendations is the cost of supporting chimpanzees in retirement sanctuaries. 
 
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 Wayne Pacelle, the president of the Humane Society, who praised the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision, said his organization and others would use the comment period to pursue the issue of using chimps in entertainment. 
 
 While the argument for medical research has been that there is a compelling human need, he said there was no such argument for using young chimps in television advertisements, for example, which he described as “entirely frivolous.” 
 
 But under the Endangered Species Act, only uses that are considered harmful or harassing require permits. And use in entertainment has not traditionally been considered to be in the same class as taking blood or other invasive procedures. 
 
 In separate interviews, Mr. Pacelle and Dr. Goodall said chimps who are trained for entertainment are taken away from their social group when they are young, which is very harmful to them. 
 
 And, Mr. Pacelle said, once the animals reach the age of about 7, they become too strong or unruly, and the owners “typically dump them into the animal welfare movement for us to care for for the next 50 years,” at a cost of about $1 million over the lifetime of each animal kept in a sanctuary. 
 
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 But, Dr. Goodall said, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s action was a major step forward. 
 
 “We’re moving in the right direction,” she said. “You take one step at a time.” ||||| The primates had previously had a ‘split status’ with those in US classified as ‘threatened’ but new rules will restrict scientific research on captive animals 
 
 The US has named chimpanzees a fully endangered species, extending greater protections to the apes in a decision that primate researcher Jane Goodall has hailed as a sign of “an awakening”. 
 
 
 
 The US Fish and Wildlife Service director, Dan Ashe, announced on Friday that chimpanzees will no longer hold their unique “split status” under US law, which since the 1990s has protected wild chimps but allowed largely unfettered research on captive animals. 
 
 Chimpanzee representatives argue for animals' rights in New York court Read more 
 
 Prompted by the worries of Aids researchers and thinking the special status would forestall the exploitation of wild chimps, the US previously classified chimps in America as “threatened”. 
 
 Ashe said: “That was a well-intentioned decision, but we now realize it was a mistake.” 
 
 Rather than solve the problem, the dual status “expanded a culture and attitude of treating these animals as commodities,” he said. 
 
 The decision to provide the full protections of the Endangered Species Act to chimpanzees follows years of research by the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Institutes of Health, as well as years of activism by the Humane Society and other animal welfare organizations. 
 
 The new rules grant new protections to the primates, restrict their commercial trade, and will probably most affect biomedical research institutions, which will now have to apply for permits in order to perform research on chimpanzees. 
 
 Absent permits, the new rule will also ban interstate commerce, and prohibit “taking”, a term that could encompass anything that could cause a chimpanzee harm or distress, from serious injury to taking blood to harassment. 
 
 The federal agency says that “permits will be issued for these activities only for scientific purposes that benefit the species in the wild, or to enhance the propagation or survival of chimpanzees.” 
 
 Researchers would need to show “substantial” contribution to chimpanzees’ survival in the wild, Ashe said, either through their scientific research or material contributions to support the animals in the wild, such as giving to habitat restoration programs. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dr Jane Goodall: ‘I think of chimpanzees as chimpanzeebeings because they’re so like us.’ Photograph: Javier Soriano/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Goodall praised the decision, saying: “There are times in the past when I wondered whether this day would ever happen. 
 
 “It shows an awakening, it shows a new consciousness. We should all raise our glasses tonight.” 
 
 Not all scientists celebrated, however, with some arguing that the rules threatened vital research that could save lives. 
 
 “This new ruling effectively means that biomedical research with the chimpanzee model may become difficult, if not impossible, to conduct,” the National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR) said in a statement, adding that the species’ contribution to medicine “benefits nearly every child born in America today”. 
 
 NABR said that chimpanzees made it possible to produce vaccines for hepatitis, and that the species could help with research in any number of diseases that humans suffer from. 
 
 “It would be unfortunate, even grave, should an infectious disease outbreak occur where human lives are at stake and a chimpanzee model could expedite development of life-saving medicines.” 
 
 But Wayne Pacelle, the president of the Humane Society of the United States, said the decision was “an incredible one-two punch for conservation and chimpanzee protection”. 
 
 While the old law “reflected some moral confusion” about chimpanzees, he said, more Americans now understood that “chimpanzees possess so many qualities that we value, the capacity to suffer, to show intelligence, awareness”. 
 
 He said the decision heralded “a new era where we treat them with respect and show concern for every individual”. 
 
 Pacelle’s view was echoed by Goodall. 
 
 “I remember so well,” she said, “how the scientific establishment told me that chimpanzees couldn’t have personalities, couldn’t have minds, couldn’t be capable of any kind of rational thought and certainly couldn’t have emotions, because those are unique to the human animal.” 
 
 Even within the past two decades “we’ve seen a lot of change,” she said. “I think of chimpanzees as chimpanzee beings because they’re so like us.” 
 
 Although many biologists and researchers remain wary of anthropomorphizing animals, and divided about how to talk about and study animal consciousness, research into intelligent and social animals has expanded massively in the past 30 years. 
 
 REsearch has found evidence that chimpanzees exhibit complex memory, emotions, self-awareness and even an awareness of death. Photograph: Juergen & Christine SohnsTier Und Naturfotografie J & C Sohns/Getty Images 
 
 The field of animal cognition has boomed alongside neuroscience, geneticists have shown that humans share most of their genes with chimpanzees, and research has shown evidence that chimps exhibit complex memory, emotions, self-awareness, and even an awareness of death. Greater research also shows quirkier similarities with mankind: 17 years of study concluded this month that some wild chimps indulge in regular, habitual drinking. 
 
 The cultural shift has extended into the public domain: though a chimpanzee once starred alongside Ronald Reagan, in May a poll found that nearly a third of Americans felt that animals deserved the same protections as humans, and this year an animal rights campaign won itself a hearing over partial, legal “personhood” for chimpanzees in New York. 
 
 That case could remove two chimpanzees from a research program at Stony Brook University in New York. 
 
 Ashe said people should not “read anything else” into the new rule except “we have learned a lot about the nature of chimpanzees”. 
 
 “Some of the things that we thought did not constitute harm or harassment of chimpanzees do in fact constitute harm and harassment,” he said, and the rule is “in large part in recognition of that”. 
 
 Goodall said she hoped the new classification would help counter the forces that threaten chimpanzees: habitat destruction by deforestation and encroaching humans, diseases, the bushmeat trade, and the “surging demand from Asia” for captive animals. 
 
 In particular, Goodall hoped the new rules would help end the practice of keeping chimps as pets or for entertainment, noting that the animals grow too powerful for their owners and suffer “psychological trauma”. 
 
 “They’re stuck between two worlds,” she said. “They’ve never learned to be a chimpanzee and they can never become a human.” 
 
 There are 1,742 chimps in the US, according to a project for the Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at the Lincoln Park Zoo: 730 in biomedical labs, 559 in sanctuaries, 265 in accredited zoos, and the remainder with unaccredited facilities and private owners. 
 
 In 2011, the National Institute of Health found that while chimpanzees had research value in the past, medical advances “have provided alternatives to the use of chimpanzees”. Two years later, the institute said it would retire about 300 research chimpanzees; to date, only a handful of those animals have gone to sanctuaries, a process that Pacelle said he wants to see expedited.
– The US is alone in conducting medical experiments on chimps, but a move yesterday by federal officials may end the practice, reports the Washington Post. The US Fish and Wildlife Service declared that all chimps are now endangered. Previously it made a distinction between those in the wild, which have been endangered for decades, and those in captivity, which had the lesser designation of "threatened." The move doesn't explicitly end medical experiments, but it will require biomedical researchers to require permits with stringent conditions to be allowed to conduct experiments. The New York Times reports that 730 chimpanzees are currently in the custody of biomedical labs, adding that the new federal designation is the result of a petition filed by Jane Goodall and the Humane Society of the US. "There are times in the past when I wondered whether this day would ever happen," Goodall tells the Guardian. “It shows an awakening, it shows a new consciousness. We should all raise our glasses tonight.” The decision also will crimp the sale of chimpanzees as pets or for use in the entertainment business, but it's expected to hit medical research institutions the hardest. Fish and Wildlife chief Dan Ashe says the original decision to extend chimps the unusual dual designation was "well-intentioned," but it ended up expanding "a culture and attitude of treating these animals as commodities."