The Gibbon Rehabilitation Project

The Gibbon Rehabilitation Project is a research division of The Wild Animal Rescue Foundation of Thailand. Khun Noppadol reuksawan, the chief of the Royal Forestry Department in Phuket together with the Asian Wildlife Fund and support from WAR, established it in 1992. Terrance Dillon Morin was also a driving force. The project's goal is to save gibbons and their rainforest habitat through rehabilitation and education. Find out more about how to become a volunteer for this project.

By means of our education programme we aim to reduce poaching and deforestation both gaining support for our project and assisting the conservation movement in Thailand. The GRP is an effective resource for teaching the local community and foreign tourists. It attracts international students and volunteers who wish to study gibbons. Gibbon conservation is not a problem unique to Thailand. What we learn here will be passed on to other projects with similar aims.

Gibbons are small, monogamous, territorial apes that live in the upper canopy of the lowland rainforest of South East Asia. These apes have a unique form of locomotion, an arm-to-arm swinging movement called brachiation. Also unique to gibbons are heir loud territorial songs, which can be heard for several kilometers in the rainforest. In the wild, gibbons feed mainly fruits, leaves, flowers and insects. They can live for more than 30 years.

Thailand's gibbons are threatened mainly by destruction of their rainforest habitat, but they are also poached for meat, medicine and the lucrative pet trade. All nine species in SE Asia are listed in Appendix 1 of the Convention in International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). In Thailand it has been illegal to take gibbons from the wild since 1992. Sadly, this practice still continues.

The GRP works with White-Handed gibbons (Hylobates lar); the most widespread of the four species found in Thailand. Gibbon babies are acquired when their mothers are shot; they are then illegally sold as pets or as tourist attractions. Sometimes they end up in bars, being taunted by tourists, forced to drink whisky and smoke cigarettes. This solitary existence is a far cry from the family life they would normally have in the wild. When gibbons reach sexual maturity, at 6-7 years, they can become aggressive and so they often get dumped or killed. If they are kept, their canines are filed down or removed and are often housed in small cages or chained up. As a result of illegal poaching, much of the rainforest in Thailand is under-populated with gibbons. At the GRP we work to rehabilitate the gibbons, which have come from captivity. Our objective is to repopulate the rainforests where gibbons once lived before they were poached to near extinction.

When a gibbon comes to the GRP it receives a medical check, undergoes blood tests for various diseases and is then placed in a quarantine area. Before gibbons are ready for release they are put through a long rehabilitation programme . This involves putting them through a series of environments, which encourages their natural behaviours and provides them with the opportunity to practice brachiating, eating natural foods and having minimum contact with humans. Juvenile gibbons are put together and adults have the opportunity to form pairs.

The GRP is currently funded by donations from the public who visit our waterfall site, from our adoption and volunteer programmes and from philanthropic companies. The volunteers make a donation to the GRP as well as giving their time and energy, many stay for several months at a time, improving their studies and using their qualifications to help the project.

We constantly need funds to keep the project alive.

Working in Forest:
Releasing the gibbons into the forest requires a large amount of work both before and after the release. We follow a soft release strategy where we provide the gibbons with fruit after they have been released. A member of staff therefore has to go into the forest to feed the released gibbons. The first family is now getting food every 2 days, but the recently released gibbons get the food everyday. The feeding also allows us to check the gibbons everyday, so we know that they are safe and healthy.

We also collect data for our research into rehabilitated gibbons. Groups of staff and volunteers will spend several days a week in the forest following and observing the gibbons. These observations start at around 6 in the morning when the gibbons will just be waking up and continue throughout the day. We follow them for the whole day and do not leave until they are sleeping. Data is recorded every 10 minutes throughout the day to record the positions of the gibbons in the forest and in relation to each other. We also record any social behaviours. At the same time we will observe a focal gibbon. Data on this gibbon will be recorded every 2 minutes.

MAPPING:
An important aspect of our work is mapping because the area in Khao Pha Theaw royal non-hunting area that we use for the releases has not been accurately mapped. We have set up a grid system within the forest so that we can accurately record where the gibbons are. These grid systems need to be recorded on maps. With the maps we can also record the territories of the gibbon families we are releasing. It is important for us to know the territories so that we can make sure future releases are not within them. Before we can release a new family we have find them a suitable territory, we than have to cut trails and map the new area.

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