NEWS

10K caged monkeys plus storm season equals worries

AMY BENNETT WILLIAMS
AWILLIAMS@NEWS-PRESS.COM

What would happen if thousands of monkeys got loose in Southwest Florida?

It may sound like the set-up for a low-budget disaster flick, but with three large primate farms housing some 10,000 animals operating in Hendry County, where storms and wildfires are facts of life, it's a fair question.

The News-Press recently asked the county's monkey farms — the Mannheimer Foundation, Primate Products and Bioculture — about their disaster plans. The three supply mostly macaques for biomedical research. A planned fourth facility, known as Primera, is embroiled in a lawsuit and not yet open.

Florida's devastating hurricanes have historically claimed many more animal than human lives. Especially notorious was Andrew, a 1992 Category 5 that killed 100 birds when it shredded a Zoo Miami aviary designed for 120-mile-per-hour winds. More than 360 primates escaped the Perrine Primate Center at the University of Miami, though most were later recaptured.

Even structures built to conform to the post-Andrew Florida Building Code, which requires some to withstand 160-mph winds, likely wouldn't hold up to such a storm, which packed gusts of 175 mph.

A pair of macacque monkeys hang our in their enclosures at Primate Products in Hendry County while an employee cleans out an enclosure.

"Hurricanes can and have pulverized cages and holding areas leading to mass escapes of wild and exotic animals (and) leaving residents terrified," says journalist and best-selling author Jane Velez-Mitchell, who regularly reports on Hendry's monkey farms on her website janeunchained.com. "Monkeys, once out, can move rapidly and reproduce rapidly. There are already serious problems with invasive species in Florida. Why on earth would you invite more problems?"

Ed Marshburn, Primate Products' facilities director, says his company spends considerable time, money and effort preventing such problems. Safety first is more than a cliche; it's sound strategy in a business where each animal is worth upward of $3,000.

"The incident at the Perrine site was an eye-opener," says Primate Products' president, veterinarian Jeff Rowell — one that has informed the industry's safety standards ever since.

A macacque monkey peers out from its enclosure at Primate Products in Hendry County. Farms say they have plans in place to prevent monkey escapes.

His farm's chain-link and concrete-block enclosures had to meet Florida's rigid hurricane codes before the county and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission would sign off on the permits more than 15 years ago. "They looked at all the plans before it was originally built, down to the size of wire," Rowell says.

The facility is designed to be fire-resistant, with bulldozed firebreaks around the property; buildings sit within well-watered, defensible areas. Electric fence hums around the perimeter, which is punctuated by security cameras.

But no amount of precautions will ease Madeleine Doran's mind. The Fort Myers retired educator has been at the forefront of area protests against Hendry's primate farms, and says their very existence poses a danger to residents.

These enclosures at Primate Products in Hendry County usually house a couple thousand macacaque monkeys at any given time. The roofs are designed to break away in the event of a storm.

"As long as the monkeys remain in Southwest Florida, there continues to be a serious threat to citizens' health and safety," she wrote in an email. "If we are hit by a Category 4 or 5 hurricane and 10,000 monkeys escape, it will devastate our environment and decimate the Everglades.

"Macaques were responsible for tuberculosis and an outbreak of the Reston strain of the Ebola virus at a Virginia research facility detailed in the bestseller 'The Hot Zone.' The toxic virus can remain dormant; if a citizen is bitten, that bite could be fatal. By not taking these threats seriously, Hendry officials are putting us all at risk."

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokeswoman Liz Barraco points out that escaped animals are more than a headache for their owner, they're a potentially expensive legal liability, because Florida's captive wildlife regulations prohibit housing creatures unsafely.

A female macacque monkey and its baby sit in an enclosure at Primate Products in Hendry County on Wednesday 7/16/2015. Primate Products has a disaster plan in case of a storm or other event.

"Incidents of escape may be construed as housing wildlife in an unsafe manner and a violation," she says, and "enforcement action may be taken against the possessor of the wildlife."

In the 15 years it's operated in Hendry, Marshburn says there have been only a few escapes and the animals were quickly recovered.

"They're captive-bred — they've never been in the wild so they're always looking to come back for food," he says. "You just put food out, prop the doors open, secure everybody else and eventually they'll come in."

Although owners are responsible for recapturing animals, if public safety's at risk, the FWC is equipped and trained to do it, Barraco says.

The agency, which licenses the farms, also requires them to have a two-part "Critical Incident and Disaster Plan" on file at their facility. Only Part A, the farms' emergency contact information, is public record. Part B, the plan itself, is not. Only FWC employees and the county's head emergency manager can see it.

When Velez-Mitchell interviewed county administrator Charles Chapman in April, he told her on-camera he didn't know how many animals the facilities house. "Beyond the site development plan approval process and the building permit approval process, the county does not delve into the day-to-day operations of any business," Chapman said. "If they're within their rights by the federal and state agencies that regulate their business, then Hendry County is not equipped to be able to run herd — no pun intended on that — on these types of businesses."

That raises all kinds of red flags for Velez-Mitchell.

"How is Hendry County going to know how to handle massive monkey escapes during a hurricane if officials refuse to even ask how many monkeys are in their county? How could Hendry County even inform emergency responders if they don't know and refuse to learn how many monkeys there are?" she asks. "This is shocking and potentially very dangerous to surrounding communities."

But although the county's new head of emergency management, Brian Newhouse has been on the job only a month, his predecessors and other administrators have toured the facilities, Newhouse says, most recently the Mannheimer Foundation's.

The county is comfortable with the farms' level of disaster preparedness, says spokeswoman Electa Waddell "especially since there are regulatory agencies higher than us that have these requirements and they're fulfilling these requirements."

The agencies she's referring to include the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Institutes of Health's Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Florida's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, all of which oversee the facilities

"So as far as Hendry County is concerned, they are definitely where they need to be and doing what they need to do," Waddell says.

The Mannheimer Foundation did not respond to The News-Press requests to voluntarily share its plan, but Primate Products did, though it asked that it not be published — not because the company is keeping secrets, but because "It's a working document not suitable for publication," company president Jeff Rowell wrote in an email.

The plan also covers a separate business, Bioculture, which leases space from Primate Products' parent company. The plastic-encased pages, housed in a three-ring binder, cover emergencies ranging from storms and wildfire to drought and sinkholes.

In addition to natural disasters, Marshburn says his company is braced for confrontations with animal rights activists as well. Over the years, several employees have been jumped and roughed up by activists until police showed up to make arrests.

"I don't think you ever become accustomed to it ... To me, when you assault someone, they're expecting you to react," he says. "I just try to ignore them."

The facility itself was built to be as disaster-proof as possible, Marshburn says. The concrete block-based monkey enclosures are firmly anchored to the ground. The upper chain-link portions are topped with Quonset hut-style roofing designed to break away in high winds rather than taking the building with it.

"We attached them lightly so a wind of around 50 miles an hour will pull them off rather than tear the fence and let the animals get out," he says. "We were here during (2005's) Hurricane Wilma, which came directly over us and we had no escapes and no deaths." Though workers had enough warning to be able to roll back and tie off the tops off during that storm, "Several times during thunderstorms, when the wind burst was strong enough, it did pull the tops loose as designed," Rowell says. Should the farm lose electricity, propane generators are at the ready.

Amanda Blocker, a 4-H leader who lives nearby, says she's not concerned by her primate neighbors.

"I was more worried when there was the (now-closed) prison here," she says. "I think they keep the monkeys very well-contained and cared for." But should one somehow get out, she's prepared — "I've got my concealed carry," she says with a laugh, "so I'm ready."