Our Work

Animals who have been used and abused in laboratories need and deserve loving care, and AAVS has been contributing to that care for over 40 years. Through AAVS’s Sanctuary Fund, donors can support one of our most rewarding programs: providing grants to sanctuaries caring for animals who are no longer used in biomedical research and testing and have been released from labs. Plus, 100% of your donation will go toward helping these animals recover and heal in peace.

Animals retired to sanctuaries can now enjoy healthy, natural foods, stimulating environments, and most importantly, the social companionship of their own kind. All this occurs under the watchful eyes of experienced caregivers who are also advocates for animal well-being.

AAVS has been supporting sanctuaries caring for animals released from laboratories since 1983. Thanks to our generous supporters, we have awarded $4.5 million to worthy sanctuaries!

Click here to contribute to the care of animals in sanctuaries

View the sanctuaries supported in 2024:

Meet some of the residents that AAVS helps support:

ELVIS

Oklahoma Primate Sanctuary, OK

Elvis is part of a group of long-tailed macaques who were released from a bankrupt New Jersey laboratory in 2010. When Elvis arrived at the Oklahoma Primate Sanctuary, he had a metal collar around his neck, a remnant of his time used in research. Laboratory workers use such collars along with a pole to handle and forcibly move monkeys.

Several years ago, Elvis’s caregivers noticed that he had started to drink and urinate more and was lethargic. Tests showed he had diabetes, a disease almost nonexistent in the wild. There is evidence that monkeys who are fed formula or other high-calory supplements as infants, instead of their mother’s breast milk, are more likely to develop diabetes as an adult. Sometimes labs will separate nursing infants from their mothers, although we don’t know for sure if this happened to Elvis.

Thankfully, through a combination of medications and a specially modified diet, Elvis’s diabetes is under control. He’s thriving and living his best life!

CINDY

Equine Advocates, NY

After years of suffering on a farm in Canada, Cindy was rescued by Equine Advocates in 2003 as part of a large rescue operation where 46 horses once used to collect Pregnant Mare Urine (PMU) were about to be sold for slaughter. PMU is used to make hormone-replacement drugs and is part of an industry that puts profits over compassion, despite the availability of alternative treatments that don’t harm horses. Cindy was impregnated multiple times to ensure her urine was concentrated with estrogens, and lived for months at a time confined in a small stall, attached to tubes collecting her urine.

Although Cindy has lived for years under the special care provided by Equine Advocates, she is still a little standoffish, understandably due to never being handled or treated kindly while being used as a PMU mare. Despite this, Cindy is thriving and loves the companionship of her besties Rose and Gerda, all of whom benefit from support from AAVS grants.

EWOK

Center for Great Apes, FL

Ewok was born at the notorious Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates in New York in 1987. One day the lock of his mother’s cage broke, and with baby Ewok clinging to her, she walked down the hall to greet another chimpanzee group. Then suddenly, another chimpanzee grabbed Ewok’s foot and bit off three of his toes! Because he had a serious injury that needed to be treated, Ewok was taken from his mom and ended up staying in the lab’s nursery, never to be returned to her.

While in the nursery, Ewok met Josh and Sabrina, who he remains close friends with at the Center for Great Apes (CGA), a longtime recipient of AAVS grants. Before arriving at the sanctuary, and after several years at the lab, the three chimps were relocated to a wildlife facility in California. Under the threat of wildfires, the chimpanzees finally arrived at CGA in 2021, where they stepped on grass for the very first time. We’re so happy that Ewok and his friends will get to live the best years of their lives in sanctuary!

View a complete list of sanctuaries that received grants from AAVS in 2024.

Support the Sanctuary Fund with a donation.