PHUKET, Thailand — The air is thick and sticky in the forest surrounding the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project center. Thanaphat Payakkaporn, head of the project, bends down to pick up the discarded shells of langsat fruits, a sign that wild gibbons have been in the area. As a series of loud, melodic whoops echo through the jungle, Thanaphat looks up at the canopy and smiles. “Bo’s son comes to visit him sometimes,” he says. Bo is a 37-year-old white-handed gibbon (Hylobates lar), rescued in 1993 after being captured and kept as a pet for five years. He’s one of around 400 gibbons that the GRP, led by Thanaphat, has rescued and rehabilitated. At least 100 have been successfully released in the provinces of Chiang Mai and Phuket, where wild gibbon populations had previously been decimated by poachers. Bo’s son is one of these gibbons, but Bo himself has proved difficult to release. Despite seven attempts, he keeps returning to the center or venturing out of the forest in search of humans. He’s now a permanent resident at the rehabilitation center. Thanaphat Payakkaporn, head of the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project, uses a rope-assisted mechanism to feed the gibbons at the project’s rehabilitation center in Phuket. Image by Ana Norman Bermúdez for Mongabay. Thailand is home to four gibbon species: white-handed or lar; black-handed or agile (Hylobates agilis), pileated (Hylobates pileatus) and siamang (Symphalangus syndactylus), all now listed as endangered due to rampant poaching and habitat fragmentation in the latter half of the 20th…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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