CHARLESTON — U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace said she supports a shutdown of a federal-owned monkey breeding colony on a South Carolina barrier island but does not want “to see them slaughtered” if the government decides it has no further use for the primates.
“I’m against all animal testing. I would defund it tomorrow if I could wave my magic wand,” the Charleston Republican said June 18 in response to a question from The Post and Courier.
Mace, who has announced her interest in running for governor, said she has been pressing for an end to federal animal experimentation, which costs the federal government about $20 billion a year, according to a House committee estimate. She pointed to her recent questions about ending animal testing during a House Armed Services Committee hearing with Trump Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“I support shutting down all animal testing that is paid for by taxpayer dollars,” she said during a press conference called in relation to legislation she’s filed about extremism and antisemitism.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-Charleston, speaks after a May 16 court proceeding in Greenville.
Federal health agencies under President Donald Trump have been reversing longstanding policies and seeking alternatives for animal experimentation in developing new vaccines and medical treatments. In recent months, the federal National Institutes of Health has announced it will phase out most animal testing. Programs to gradually end animal experiments are underway at the Veteran’s Administration and the federal Food and Drug Administration.
Policy reversals have raised questions about the long-term future of Morgan Island, the government’s largest free-roaming colony of rhesus monkeys, located on a barrier island in St. Helena Sound. The government signed a new contract for the island in 2023 and has called it a national security asset that allows quicker response to bioterror events.
Monkeys on the Beaufort County island have been captured and shipped to federal research centers since the colony opened in 1979 under a veil of government secrecy. The island is owned by the state of South Carolina, but the monkeys are owned by a division of NIH and cared for by private contractor Alpha Genesis. Alpha Genesis also owns monkey farms in Yemassee and Early Branch, and a private research laboratory on its own property.
The contractor recently received another $4.5 million to care for the monkeys this year.
Mace has been the leading congressional critic of Morgan Island, commonly known as Monkey Island, which is in her district. She took a boat trip in 2021 to focus attention on research involving hundreds of the 3,500 monkeys who live on the isolated breeding colony in the St. Helena Sound.
Mace’s group, which included animal rights activists, was not allowed on the property. Public access is barred because of safety and disease risks.
At the June 18 press conference, Mace accused the contractor of sending a family member to her recent town hall meeting in Yemassee “to spy on me. And it was so visceral my security team thought he might be there to physically harm me.”
Greg WesternGard, the CEO of Alpha Genesis, Declined to comment.
The issue of what would become of Morgan Island’s primates in the event of a federal closure has weighed on public officials since the early 2000s, when the S.C. Department of Natural Resources made plans to buy the property using federal conservation funding.
Experts reported that there was no easy way to clear the island of monkeys. Even with a concentrated effort to trap monkeys, they predicted that as many as 600 would evade capture.
Mace, responding to a Post and Courier question, said she would support making Morgan Island “a sanctuary for protected primates, or put them in a place where there’s a sanctuary that already exists. I would not want to see them slaughtered.”
The federal government currently funds a sanctuary for retired research chimpanzees in Louisiana, housing primates phased out of use in experiments after a public outcry about animal cruelty.
