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It was back in April, 2003. I tried to swallow the lump in
my throat as the heaviness of such tragic loss touched me
in a place where I had experienced intense grief myself. After
a minute I pulled myself together and called out to Lisa.
"You've got to read this", I said somberly pulling
at her arm. We poured over the news story and I looked at
her and said, "We have to go there and see how we can
help." Lisa studied my face briefly and after sensing
my sincerity she blinked and said, "OK. Let's go."
It was a story posted on the internet dated
August, 2002. How I had missed it before I don't know but
there it was plain as daylight. William Deters, director of
the Highland Farm Gibbon Sanctuary in Thailand, was brutally
murdered on 10 May 2002, along with four local Thai workers,
including a three year old girl. An ex-employee of the farm,
an illegal Burmese worker, was later arrested in connection
with the killings and, according to Bill's Widow Pharanee,
he later confessed that he shot Bill after Bill walked in
on the ex-worker attempting to steal several guns kept in
the house.
View News Story
Several months before discovering this article
we had contacted several other conservation organizations
working to benefit the gibbons in several countries of Southeast
Asia. But, in most cases, we questioned the organizations'
credibility. We had developed a healthy cynicism of charities
with high administrative costs and with only a very little
portion of the donated dollar actually arriving to directly
benefit the intended cause. We had found the Highland Farm
Gibbon Sanctuary website (View
Website) on the internet and it seemed to be a quality
operation but unfortunately the website had not been updated
since Bill's murder in 2002. Only after stumbling across the
article chronicaling Bill's death did we feel we could make
a difference. We agreed this would be a great opportunity
to travel directly to visit a cause in need and hand over
the undiluted greenbacks with no middleman and nothing to
diminish the satisfaction of giving: a purely selfish way
to give.
Almost one year later we found ourselves
full of anticipation and excitement as the bus pulled out
of the Northern Bus Terminal in Bangkok. By the end of the
day we would find ourselves amongst 36 swinging and singing
apes whose tragic lives would bring them to the Highland Farm
Gibbon Sanctuary. The farm is located in a remote part of
Thailand, near Mae Sot in Thailand's northwestern mountain
province. We travelled eight hours through the central farming
regions of Thailand and then west towards the Burmese border.
As the heat broke in the late afternoon we knew we were getting
close as we passed through a military checkpoint while still
in Thailand where immigration officials boarded the bus and
checked every one's papers. The only other westerner travelling
on this bus with us was an American aid worker headed for
the border town of Mae Sot to work with Burmese refugees as
a member of an NGO. Thirty minutes later we arrived at the
dusty Mae Sot bus station, a dirt lot surrounded by merchants'
shacks selling soda and snacks.
Waiting to meet us was Pharanee Deters,
the surviving founder and director of the Highland Farm Gibbon
Sanctuary which we would call home for the next twelve days.
Over the next two weeks we would learn the story of Pharanee's
life, some of it tragic, most of it magic and never a dull
story. Hers' is a life of unintended consequences.
We had learned of the gibbon sanctuary on the internet after
discovering two young and very affectionate white hand gibbons
in Southern Thailand. During our ill-fated attempt to help
rescue these two beautiful singing apes from an all too common
fate in South East Asia, we learned the sad truth of the plight
of the gibbons in the hands of the pet industry. This experience
inspired us to do something, anything, and the first step
was to research conservation efforts.
The gibbons' irresistable charm is, ironically,
the force that drives their demise. In the wild, adults live
as highly territorial monogamous pairs, commanding respect
for their own large area of the rainforest. Hence the problem:
The rain forests of SouthEast Asia are disappearing at an
alarming rate and the gibbons habitat with it. In Thailand
the gibbons are exploited by the pet and tourist industries.
Adorable, intelligent and extremely responsive
to human affection, young gibbons are easy to handle and bond
with their human caretakers in the absence of a natural parent.
This makes them irresistible as house pets or for unscrupulous
entrepreneurs. They tragically end up in bars where they are
taught to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes just to entertain
the customers. Gibbons in the wild normally go to sleep shortly
before the sunsets but for these exploited gibbons drugs are
often given to keep them awake until late into the night.
Another tragic way in which gibbons are exploited is when
the owner of a "pet" gibbon displays the gibbon
to people roaming the beaches near resorts. The owner collects
money in exchange for photos of the tourists and the cute
little gibbon. Unaware of the gibbons' nutritional needs the
owners will feed them a very poor diet.
When gibbons reach adolescence at the age of 5 or 6 they
become sexually mature and more aggressive. At this point
they develop large canine teeth. When their owners are no
longer able to handle the gibbons they file down the canine
teeth or have them pulled out. Eventually, having lost the
ability to make money from the gibbons' because of their aggressive
behavior, owners will often dump or kill them. If the owner
decides to keep them, they are locked in a small cage or tied
to a chain, physically and emotionally abused for years. If
the owner decides to dump the gibbon they are often given
to the Thai authorities whose sanctuaries have limited resources
and housing. This glut of wild-born captive gibbons has created
a serious problem for the Thai government.
Our heads filled with unanswered questions
about gibbons, we threw our packs into the back of the sanctuary's
gibbon-mobile and climbed in for the 42 KM ride into the hills
south of Mae Sot to the sanctuary. Along the way we passed
rice fields recently set alight to clear the ground before
the rains scheduled to arrive in late May. A smokey haze obscured
the mountain peaks marking the Burmese border to the West.
Illegal Burmese workers worked in the fields along the road.
They were sheltered from the heat of the day only by their
wide-brimmed straw hats as they picked and bundled peanut
plants.
Upon arrival we were shown to our quarters
and as we passed several bird cages a bird spoke to us in
Thai in a flawless human voice. It was kinda spooky. This
bird could mimic any sound it heard with stunning clarity
and we learned to be careful what we said around it. Before
dinner we were briefly introduced to the gibbons, all 36 of
them. Having been warned of the possibility of aggressive
behavior towards strangers, we kept a healthy distance from
them as we made our rounds. Roughly one-third of the gibbons
at the Sanctuary are missing one or several limbs, several
have physical deformities, three are partially or totally
blind, and several shows signs of severe mental illness. Each
gibbon had it's own story of its life before the sanctuary
and how it came to arrive at this remote oasis retirement
village. The introductions were overwhelmed us with sadness.
Later as we settled in to our cozy guest
quarters we wondered about the mosquitoes and cockroaches.
The frogs chirped to a solemn rhythm and we drifted off to
sleep having concluded that there weren't any mosquitoes at
the farm despite the area being one of the world's most extreme
malaria "hot-spots" along the Thai-Burmese border.
That was a bonus.
The next morning came earlier than expected
and was pay-back for some long-forgotten misdeed. Sometime
around 4:30 AM before the predawn glow even approached the
horizon the singing began. Within fifteen minutes others had
joined into the chorus of singing apes. It was loud and very
close by but we couldn't be too irritated. This was, afterall,
their territory, and they made sure everyone within several
kilometers knew it. Not even the earplugs we frequently use
on our travels could block out the morning gibbon song. We
could only smile and be content that we had arrived. By the
third day's predawn concert we began to ask ourselves, "What
have we gotten ourselves into?"
The plan was to meet Noc at the preparation
area, an informal outdoor sink and large countertop, where
we began preparing breakfast for the gibbons. Noc was a fulltime
employee of the farm who lived with Pharanee and supervised
the feeding of the gibbons. We were surprised at how well
these fuzzy apes ate. The morning meal of fresh fruit consisted
of one banana, two sliced mangoes, five slices of fresh tomatoes,
six slices of some type of squash, A few slices of pineapple,
and about marion plums; quite a colorful buffet. Lesson one:
deliver the bowl of fresh fruit to the feeding basket without
letting the gibbon reach through the chain link fencing and
grab you. Sounds simple, right? Being the fastest non-flight
animal in the rainforest we were given a run for the money.
Not being familiar with their tactics we fell prey to their
innocent grins and smiles. It would take 4 or 5 days before
we learned which gibbons were aggressive and which of them
just needed to get to know us better. Initially, we were a
bit surprised at the gibbons' reaction to us. I guess we had
expected all young affectionate gibbons. We readjusted our
expectations and settled in for the long haul.
After the second night's dinner conversation it became immediately
apparent at how we could add the most value to our visit.
It wouldn't be building new enclosures, hosing gibbon poop
out of the enclosures or even repairing older cages. With
Pharanee paying local Thai laborers $250 baht (about US $7.00)
per DAY for a hard days work, we could hardly compete with
the cheap and plentiful labor pool in the area. No, we would
be conscripted into service of the gibbons by using more specialized
talents. We traveled halfway across the planet to escape our
"world" and stumbled onto an opportunity. What would
be the best use of our time? We were quickly recruited to
evaluate the many disparate computers which had been donated
to the farm and to build the sanctuary a state-of-the-art
website. The current website had not been updated since Bill's
tragic murder in May, 2002.
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New Pictures of the Gibbons
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