Qualla: Monkey Island, Liberia

Monkey Island, Liberia: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The chimpanzees cannot swim. That was the point. When researchers at the Vilab II laboratory needed a way to contain their test subjects after the experiments ended, the six uninhabited mangrove islands at the confluence of the Farmington and Little Bassa rivers in Grand Bassa County offered a natural solution. Surrounded by water the chimps could never cross, the islands became a permanent home for animals that could no longer survive in the wild. What began as a containment strategy has become, over decades and through crisis after crisis, one of the more complicated stories of scientific ethics, corporate abandonment, and stubborn human compassion in West Africa.

Read more: Monkey Island, Liberia on Qualla

Monkey Island, Liberia: Needles and Vaccines

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Beginning in 1974, the Vilab II research facility, backed by the New York Blood Center and the Liberian Institute for Biomedical Research, conducted hepatitis and other infectious disease experiments on chimpanzees in Liberia. The chimps were injected with various strains of hepa...

Read more: Monkey Island, Liberia on Qualla

Monkey Island, Liberia: Left Without a Lifeline

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When the experiments ended in 2005, the New York Blood Center continued funding caretakers who brought food and fresh water to the islands every other day. The islands themselves lack both. For ten years, this arrangement held. Then, in March 2015, with the Ebola crisis ravaging ...

Read more: Monkey Island, Liberia on Qualla

Monkey Island, Liberia: The Caretakers Who Stayed

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

While the corporate offices deliberated, the people on the ground kept showing up. Thomas and his fellow caretakers loaded boats with whatever fruit they could gather and motored out to the islands. The Humane Society of the United States stepped in with emergency funding, and pu...

Read more: Monkey Island, Liberia on Qualla

Monkey Island, Liberia: An Island Without an Exit

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Monkey Island is not a feel-good rescue story, though it contains acts of genuine rescue. It is a place where the consequences of medical research persist long after the papers have been published and the grants have closed. The chimps cannot be released into wild populations. Th...

Read more: Monkey Island, Liberia on Qualla