Can You Own a Chimpanzee in New Mexico? What State and Federal Law Actually Allow

Chimpanzees share roughly 98 percent of their DNA with humans, but that genetic closeness doesn’t make them safe or legal to keep as household pets. If you’re asking whether you can own a chimpanzee in New Mexico, the short answer is no — state wildlife regulators have closed off that option almost entirely, and federal rules add another layer of restriction on top of it.

This matters for anyone in New Mexico who has looked into exotic pet ownership, seen viral videos of pet chimps, or wondered why sanctuaries exist for animals that seem like they’d make fascinating companions. Below, you’ll find a breakdown of what state law says, how federal statutes fit into the picture, what permits actually exist, and what happens if someone tries to keep a chimp anyway.

Is It Legal to Own a Chimpanzee in New Mexico

The chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) is one of the most cognitively complex animals on the planet, capable of tool use, problem-solving, and forming lifelong social bonds — traits that also make captivity in a private home psychologically damaging for the animal and genuinely dangerous for the people around it. New Mexico’s regulators have taken that risk seriously. New Mexico prohibits private ownership of certain exotic animals without specific authorization, and the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish (NMDGF) enforces these restrictions under the state’s Wildlife Conservation Act.

Chimpanzees and other primates fall directly within that prohibition. It is against the law in New Mexico to own felines, crocodiles, wolves, alligators, and primates. A handful of permit categories exist for other exotic species, but they aren’t built for private chimp ownership.

Pro Tip: If you’re researching exotic pet law in New Mexico more broadly, our overview of monkey ownership laws in New Mexico covers how the state treats smaller primate species, which are also off-limits for private keeping.

What Federal Law Currently Says About Primate Ownership

Federal law doesn’t offer a workaround for New Mexico’s ban, and in some ways it reinforces it. The two main federal laws that affect chimpanzees are the Animal Welfare Act of 1966 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Neither law was written to regulate backyard pet ownership directly — the most that federal laws do is regulate the conditions under which chimpanzees are transported and housed, and the ways in which humans must care for them while they are under their control.

The Endangered Species Act angle matters more than people realize. All chimpanzees, whether wild-born or captive-bred, are now classified as endangered, after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ended the split listing for chimpanzees in the Endangered Species Act. That change means anyone seeking to buy, sell, or transport a chimp across state lines needs a federal permit justifying the activity for conservation, scientific, or educational purposes — categories that private pet ownership doesn’t fit.

There’s also a bill working its way through Congress that would close the remaining federal gap. The Captive Primate Safety Act (CPSA) would amend the Lacey Act to prohibit the private possession of nonhuman primates such as chimpanzees, galagoes, gibbons, gorillas, lemurs, lorises, monkeys, orangutans, and tarsiers. About half of all states already prohibit private possession of some or all primate species, and New Mexico is among them.

Important Note: As of this writing, the Captive Primate Safety Act has been reintroduced in Congress but has not been signed into law. It would create a nationwide ban if passed, but until then, primate ownership rules are set almost entirely at the state and local level.

New Mexico’s Laws on Owning a Chimpanzee

New Mexico doesn’t have a statute that names chimpanzees or great apes specifically. Instead, the state does not have any laws that directly address the protection of great apes, and while New Mexico controls possession and importation of endangered species by law, great apes are not specifically identified or addressed in that statute. The restriction comes through a different mechanism: the state’s importation permit system.

Under that system, the NMDGF sorts every non-domesticated species into one of four importation groups, and the group assignment determines whether — and how — an animal can legally be brought into or kept in New Mexico.

Importation Group	Description	Permit Status
Group I	Semi-domesticated animals	No permit required
Group II	Non-domesticated animals not known to be invasive or dangerous	Permit required
Group III	Animals presenting minimal or manageable concerns	Permit with specific provisions
Group IV	Elephants, zebras, kangaroos, monkeys, great apes, rhinoceroses	Prohibited for general public

Elephants, zebras, kangaroos, monkeys, and rhinoceroses are Group IV animals — the most restrictive tier — and great apes fall under species importation list Group IV, which designates “prohibited species” that the general public is prohibited from importing. That classification is what makes private chimp ownership functionally impossible in New Mexico, even though no single sentence in state law mentions chimpanzees by name.

If you want to see how this compares to species New Mexico does allow with the right paperwork, our guide to hedgehog ownership laws in New Mexico shows what a lower-risk permitted exotic pet looks like under the same regulatory framework. New Mexico’s approach to endangered animals in New Mexico also helps explain why the state treats a globally endangered species like the chimpanzee with such caution, even without a dedicated statute.

Permits and Requirements for Chimpanzee Ownership in New Mexico

Because chimpanzees sit in Group IV, there is effectively no permit pathway open to private individuals. Permits for primates in New Mexico are reserved for accredited zoos, scientific research institutions, and approved educational facilities — not private individuals. That’s a meaningful distinction from states where a wealthy or well-connected applicant might still obtain a personal possession permit.

For the institutions that do qualify, the process is still demanding. New Mexico requires permits for individuals and organizations seeking to own certain exotic animals, and the NMDGF oversees this process, which varies based on species and purpose. Applicants must justify ownership by detailing housing, veterinary care and emergency planning. Applicants must justify ownership by detailing housing, veterinary care, and contingency plans for escapes or emergencies, and personal possession permits are the most difficult to obtain due to public safety and animal welfare concerns.

Educational and exhibition permits follow a separate track, but they still come with strings attached. Educational and exhibition permits, granted to zoos, wildlife sanctuaries, and research institutions, require compliance with federal laws such as the Animal Welfare Act. That dual layer of state and federal oversight is one reason why nearly every chimpanzee living in New Mexico is housed at an accredited sanctuary or research facility rather than a private residence.

For context, the NMDGF issues permits for many other categories of wildlife activity — from turkey hunting season in New Mexico to livestock-adjacent permits like those covered in our goat ownership laws in New Mexico guide. Those systems show how permit tiers scale with risk; chimpanzees simply sit above the line where private permits stop being issued. The department’s authority over wildlife more broadly, including how it handles found or injured animals, is also covered in our piece on roadkill laws in New Mexico.

Local Laws That May Apply in New Mexico

Even where state law is silent on a specific detail, cities and counties in New Mexico can — and do — add their own restrictions. State law sets the floor, but cities and counties in New Mexico can layer additional restrictions on top of it, and even if state law were to change in the future, a city ordinance could independently prohibit primate ownership within its limits. Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Las Cruces each maintain their own animal control codes.

Albuquerque’s municipal code is explicit on this point. The city’s animal ordinance defines a category called “Prohibited Exotic or Wild Animals” and states plainly that Albuquerque bans owning, possessing, breeding, selling, or displaying Prohibited Exotic or Wild Animals — including big cats, wolves, bears, primates, large constrictors, and venomous snakes — anywhere in the city, with narrow exemptions for accredited zoos, vets, and sanctuaries. The underlying code language is direct: it shall be unlawful for any person to own, possess, keep, harbor, bring into the city, sell, have in one’s possession, act as a custodian, or have custody or control of a Prohibited Exotic or Wild Animal, and it shall be unlawful for any person to display or sponsor a display of Prohibited Exotic or Wild Animals on any public or private land within the City of Albuquerque.

Smaller municipalities follow similar patterns. Elephant Butte’s code, for example, bars residents from keeping porcupine, nonhuman primates, alligators, crocodiles, vipers, venomous snakes, and venomous lizards without a city permit, and even then, such animals cannot legally be housed in private residences. Many municipalities explicitly ban exotic or wild animals in residential zones, independent of whatever the state permits, so it is worth checking with your city or county animal control office directly before assuming a state-level rule is the whole story.

Local animal control ordinances also intersect with other everyday rules New Mexico residents already navigate, including leash laws in New Mexico and disputes like those addressed in our guide to a neighbor’s cat wandering into your yard. Those are lower-stakes examples, but they illustrate how much authority sits at the municipal level rather than with the state alone.

Penalties for Illegally Owning a Chimpanzee in New Mexico

New Mexico treats unauthorized possession of a prohibited species as a criminal matter, not just a paperwork violation. Violation of this section is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $1,000 or imprisonment for no less than 30 days but no more than one year, or both, under NM ST §17-2-45(B). That penalty applies on top of any animal seizure that follows.

There are administrative consequences as well. Under Section 19.35.7.8, violation of permit provisions may result in the applicant or importer becoming ineligible for importation of wildlife into New Mexico, and violators may be subject to both administrative action and criminal prosecution. The director may also require a certificate of compliance and impose other corrective measures when violations of this section have occurred. In practice, that means an illegally kept chimp is typically confiscated and transferred to an accredited sanctuary, while the owner faces both a criminal record and a permanent bar on future wildlife permits.

Local penalties can stack on top of state charges. In Albuquerque, it is prohibited to release any captive wildlife into the wild, and those found violating these regulations may face fines and/or imprisonment under the city’s own animal ordinance, separate from any state-level case. Given that a full-grown chimpanzee can weigh well over 100 pounds and is strong enough to cause serious injury, courts and animal control agencies in New Mexico generally treat these cases as public safety matters first and property disputes second — a pattern that shows up in other contexts too, such as liability questions covered in our guide to what happens if a dog bites someone in New Mexico.

Pro Tip: If you’ve encountered a privately kept primate in New Mexico, contact the NMDGF or your local animal control office rather than approaching the animal directly. Reporting suspected illegal ownership is the fastest way to get the animal to a facility equipped to care for it.

Anyone drawn to chimpanzees is better served supporting an accredited sanctuary or zoo than attempting private ownership. New Mexico’s layered restrictions — state importation rules, municipal ordinances, and federal endangered species protections — exist because chimps are neither safe nor content living in a human household, and the law reflects a consensus that’s been building for decades among wildlife regulators and animal welfare organizations alike.