Captive chimpanzees that were previously listed as "threatened" will now have a similar status to their wild counterparts as they are becoming "endangered."

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) declared on June 12 that all U.S. chimpanzees will be considered endangered under the Endangered Special Act, National Geographic reports.

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The announcement is such a big change for the U.S. since captive chimpanzees have remained unprotected by the law for almost a quarter of a century.

Now that captive chimps will get protection from the government, the import and export of the animal will be regulated and their use in biomedical research and studies will also monitored.

Prior to this law, captive chimps have become a product that's widely sold and bought for scientific studies. Most chimps are being used as test subjects of several medical experiments, enduring the pain of being injected uncertain fluids just so man can benefit from another medical breakthrough.

The umbrella of federal protection for captive chimpanzees will start to take effect this Sept. 4—nearly four years since a proposal to break the distinction on how wild chimpanzees should be treated differently from their captive brethren was forwarded to the U.S. FWS.

The petition was reportedly initiated by Jane Goodall, along with other groups and the Humane Society of the United States, New York Times has learned.

As per latest statistics, 1,724 of these Pan apes are captive, while 730 of the said number are exclusively used by labs.

Since the 20th century, the number of chimps vanishing from the wild has reached millions, most of them disappeared when humans started to invade their habitats and hunt them for their meat.

"Extending captive chimpanzees the protections afforded their endangered cousins in the wild will ensure humane treatment and restrict commercial activities under the Endangered Species Act," said Dan Ashe, director of U.S. FWS.

The new regulation hopes to diminish the chances of the chimpanzees becoming absolutely extinct. Hence, scientists who are going to use chimps for their studies should demonstrate that their use of the apes in their laboratories will help support the main goal of conserving chimps that are still in the wild, according to Sydney Morning Herald.

TagsChimpanzee, Ape, Kendall Jenner, Science