03-07-2025
E.P.A. Employees Are Invited to Adopt Soon-to-Be Homeless Lab Rats
Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency's research campus in North Carolina are preparing to take on a new responsibility. Bring home lab rats as pets.
Or maybe some zebra fish.
Both animals have long been used at the E.P.A. facility to test the toxicity of chemicals. But as the E.P.A. shuts down its research arm as part of the Trump administration's deep cuts to government scientific work, the animals need new homes.
So employees at the agency's sprawling Research Triangle Park in North Carolina have set up an adoption plan, according to four people with knowledge of the program. Staff members can take home the rats or fish and keep them as pets.
'Adopt love. Save a life,' read a poster displayed on campus last week, according to a picture obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit that provides legal assistance to government workers who speak out on environmental issues. 'Would you like to adopt?'
According to an email sent Tuesday by Maureen R. Gwinn, acting assistant administrator of E.P.A.'s Office of Research and Development, the program has started accepting applications, though adoptions were on a temporary hold as the agency considered the adoption criteria.
The E.P.A. works with about 20,000 animals, one of the people said, a vast majority of which are fish or fish larvae. Two rabbits also remained on the North Carolina campus until recently, the person said, but they have now been adopted.
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