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.
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 hepatitis, onchocerciasis (river blindness), and other diseases. Once infected, they were transferred to one of six islands, numbered rather than named, where water served as the walls of their open-air containment. The research bore fruit: it contributed to the development of a hepatitis B vaccine and a screening method for hepatitis C, breakthroughs that have since saved millions of lives. But the cost was borne entirely by the animals, whose bodies became instruments of a science they could not comprehend and a freedom they would never recover.
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 Liberia, the NYBC abruptly withdrew its financial support, stating it could no longer divert funds from its domestic mission. The announcement set off an international outcry. Animal welfare organizations, scientists, and members of the public condemned what they saw as a betrayal of the institution's moral obligation to animals it had used and rendered dependent. On the islands, the chimps began to starve. Their caretakers, led by Joseph Thomas, who had tended the animals for decades, went stall to stall at local fruit markets seeking donations to keep the feeding schedule alive.
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 public pressure mounted on the Blood Center to honor its responsibility. In 2017, the NYBC agreed to provide six million dollars to the Humane Society to ensure the chimpanzees' long-term welfare. Today, more than sixty chimps live across the islands in what has become an informal sanctuary, their forested mangrove habitat maintained by a dedicated staff. The islands sit within the Marshall Wetlands, a landscape of mature mangrove forests giving way to savanna and secondary forest further inland, where the Farmington and Little Bassa rivers empty into the Atlantic.
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. They cannot feed themselves on islands that produce nothing they can eat. They are entirely dependent on human beings arriving by boat with bananas and clean water, a dependency created by human beings who arrived by boat with syringes. The sanctuary continues to evolve. As recently as 2025, staff relocated chimps temporarily to the mainland while upgrading island facilities. What endures, beyond the ethical arguments, is the daily reality: someone still has to load the boat.
Located at 6.120N, 10.302W in the Marshall Wetlands of Grand Bassa County, Liberia, where the Farmington and Little Bassa rivers converge before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. The six islands are visible from low altitude as small, densely forested mangrove patches amid the river delta. Nearest airport is Roberts International Airport (GLRB), approximately 30 km northeast. Recommended viewing altitude: 1,000-2,000 feet to distinguish the individual islands from the surrounding wetlands. Coastal tropical climate with heavy monsoon rains June through October.