“You like?”, the owner asked me as Lisa was attempting to extricate a mischievous lanky gibbon from her loosely braided hair. Standing up on her hind legs Julia Roberts, as we would come to know her, reached up to hold Lisa’s hands. Lisa accepted the invitation and held Julia’s hands. Once Lisa had hold of both hands the not so graceful gibbon tightened her grip and pulled her self upside down using Lisa’s dangling arms as leverage. The whole maneuver resembled an instant replay of a cherry drop. The gentle ape released Lisa’s hands and pulled itself up onto Lisa’s head and began picking through her hair in search of bugs and other critters. This is what gibbons do. It’s how they socialize: quality time spent taking turns picking bugs out of each other’s fur. Julia liked Lisa’s hair and I couldn’t help but laugh.

I responded to the owner and told him that we liked the gibbons so much that we had come back. He said, “Oh, you come yesterday. I remember you”.

Lisa stood motionless with a wide grin as Julia Roberts, a three and a half year old white-gloved gibbon, sat on Lisa’s head picking through her hair. Apparently disappointed with Lisa’s lack of bugs, Julia leaped to a nearby rail trailing her light chain and collar and sat on her haunches with an expressionless face studying us.

I wandered towards the rail and Julia immediately went for my pockets. Using one hand to pull the pocket fabric open and blindly plunging a mass of long delicate fingers into my pocket she shuffled around looking for food, keys, a wallet, anything. Wisely I had stowed all my belongings in our backpack well out of Julia’s reach. As she searched my pockets I noticed the resemblance to the real Julia Roberts. The similarity was in her lips which stretched long and thin across her face.

Ooooooo……oooOOOO……OOOOOOOOHHHHHHH……..HHHHHHOOOOOOoooooooo. I had initially thought it was a car alarm but I could see 50 meters away that Romeo, another female (don’t ask), was perched in a tree holding the end of a long chain dangling from her collar as she sat on a branch looking far out into the forest and calling. I wondered if she was sadly calling for her mom or a playmate to pay attention to her. We responded and closed the distance quickly. Romeo came down to greet us. Her fur was so clean and soft as we pet her cautiously. I resisted the temptation to bury my nose in her soft fur. She responded with cooing sounds as Lisa and I picked at her fur and scratched her head. Her fuzzy head slowly bowed to her chest in total submission as we shifted through her glossy black hair looking for bugs but only finding her healthy black scalp. I could feel her breathing slow as she became very relaxed and then we stopped and pulled away. Without hesitation she collapsed backwards exposing her round fuzzy gibbon belly and outstretched her lanky arms, reaching for our hands and gently guiding them to her belly. We scratched her belly and she just stared off into space growing more and more calm. It was the most intimate animal encounter we had ever had in our lives. These gentle fuzzy gibbons were so damn cute and we had fallen in love.

We returned to Julia Roberts to equally distribute our affections and the owner surprised us by quietly making his offer, “You want to buy? I will sell.” I was shocked and didn’t know what to say. My mind raced.

"How much you sell for”, I said as a knee jerk reaction thinking he must surely be joking. The man thought and obviously picked a number out of the sky.

“Thirty-thousand”, the words floated above us for several seconds.

I was silently calculating the conversion to US dollars in my head. Thirty thousand by 42 is about seven hundred. No. It’s more than seven hundred. I ball-parked it at $750 and cringed. But inside my head was a germinating thought that hadn’t broken the soil of my consciousness. After several minutes of idle conversation the thought bloomed and I thought about the alternative. What if no one purchased Julia Roberts? Why was this man so willing to rid himself of this beautiful white-gloved gibbon? What would happen to her when she grew older and less affectionate? What if she grew unruly and became aggressive, as we had heard apes and monkeys do? Would he destroy her? Would he sink her in the ocean inside a canvas bag or shoot her? The thoughts came flooding in and they were disturbing.

I asked him how much he had paid for her and he sensed my interest. She was from Indonesia he had said and he had paid 3000 baht (US$73.00) for her three and a half years ago when she was a baby.
He wouldn’t say where he bought her but it wasn’t hard to guess. Thailand is famous for its blatant disregard for endangered species and ignores international pressure to close its numerous endangered animal markets in and around Bangkok.

“No, we no buy. It is illegal”, I said in an attempt to make my English understandable. What do you say to an offer like that? The conversation was upsetting me and I wandered off to play with Romeo again. My heart felt heavy with sadness and I couldn’t avoid the dark thoughts welling up inside me.

After several hours, Lisa and I decided it was time to go. We had fantasies of fleeing on our motorbike with two lanky gibbons clinging to us, their jet-black fur swept back in the wind as we made our getaway. But what would we do with them? Release them into the jungle without the skills to defend themselves? Watch them climb a tree only to have a branch break on them and fall to their deaths? (Their little minds had been conditioned that all their handholds were reliable so they would only assume the same of any branch in the wild.) Having survived on a diet of only rice where would they find a more natural food source? Reality painted over our heroic fantasy in broad brushstrokes.

We drove away not saying a word with tightness constricting our throats and misty eyes. I haven’t felt heartfelt sadness like that in a very long time. We drove for miles and my eyes welled up with tears. These beautiful animals had touched a side of me that had lay dormant for many years. Later that night when we shared our feelings about the experience we both committed to do something. We just didn’t know what it was we would do.

Several days later we laid on the white sand beaches of Koh Pha Ngan and swam in the warm ocean waves. Decompressing to mend nerves deeply frayed in Hanoi and regaining our health, our minds had much idle time to formulate a strategy: a diabolical scheme to save these two gibbons from what we assumed was a cruel and tragic existence. Surely this was our purpose as warriors on a“Monkey Trek”.

It was decided. We would take the ferry back to the mainland at Surat Thani in two days time where we would board a bus to cross the Thai Peninsula to Phuket. After spending the night in Phuket we would drive out to the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project near the National Park on Phuket Island. We would tell the staff we had located two gibbons and that the owner offered to sell them to us. We would show the videotape we took of Julia Roberts and Romeo for them to see. We would ask them to act as support in transporting the gibbons and we would purchase the fuzzy little ladies. The staff would transport our friends to the Gibbon Rehabilitation Center where, after some lessons in eating natural food sources and identifying reliable handholds for swinging, they would be ready for a life in the jungle playing with their friends and searching for a mate with whom to build a family. As an added enticement for the staff we would offer to pay for the transportation costs and if they balked at that we would pay the expenses for the gibbons’ first year, including any medical costs. Ambitious, non? Naïve?..... very!

We spent some time researching gibbon rehabilitation on the Internet and then we were off like a prom dress. The ferry delivered us to Surat Thani and we bolted for the bus. Six hours later we pulled into the bus station at Phuket under a darkened sky. We found a hotel. Oh it was bad! The next morning after breakfast we were buzzing along on a rented motorbike passing dump trucks and buses spewing tarry diesel exhaust. We arrived in the heat of the midday sun. So far so good.

We visited the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project information center which was manned by two students from Canada. We listened attentively to their explanations of the plight of the gibbons in Thailand without leaking word of our plan. They had a register to report sightings of illegally kept gibbons around Thailand but it wasn’t good enough for us to just report the imprisonment of Julia Roberts and Romeo. We had come to solicit allies for our plan to liberate the silky haired white-gloved gibbons.

Our faces lit up upon seeing the other gibbons swinging and whooping at the project’s site. Our hearts sang out with them. They seemed happy enough. A recently released gibbon swung through the forest towards the cages as the volunteers began the feeding ritual, an elaborate process to ensure the gibbons did not associate food with humans. After charming the volunteer staff with our videotape we asked to speak with the director. They gladly gave us the location of the headquarters office and we sped off to speak to the director.

We found the unassuming headquarters which appeared to have been converted from a fair sized home. The GRP (Gibbon Rehabilitation Project) sign and the mobile animal medical clinic vehicle outside marked the spot. We politely called in through the closed screen door and a woman came to greet us. We asked to speak with the Director. She politely asked the nature of our business. We told her we wanted to talk with him about some gibbons we had discovered.

The Director turned out to be Dr. Suwit Pannadee, Health and Science Manager of the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project. The good Doctor was a Doctor of Veterinarian Medicine. He was a young Thai man with a calm nature. We broke down and spilled our story out onto the table that separated us from the good Doctor. He listened intently. We had relayed our experience trying to be as factual as possible and keep our emotions in check. A moment of brief silence and we laid out our plan.

“We would like to fund the purchase of Julia Roberts and Romeo and we would pay for their first year of care.” Damn! We threw the ace up our sleeves a bit too early believing it would help overcome any resistance.

We sat in silence and the good Doctor just looked at us. We hoped that we hadn’t spoken too fast for him to understand. Eventually he broke the bad news to us. We were crushed!

Gibbons in captivity can acquire diseases that could endanger entire populations in the wild. Diseases like HIV, Hepatitis, and Herpes are not uncommon in gibbons kept as pets. We didn’t want to know how they might catch these dreadful diseases. “Ok, but can’t they be screened or tested?” we challenged.

“Yes, that is part of the process,” the good Doctor replied. “All animals that come to us are placed in quarantine for six months with no contact with other gibbons or humans during this time. Their blood is tested and if they are clean they may become candidates for release back into the wild after some training and conditioning. This whole process can take two years or more.”

But what if they are not eligible for release? What if they have these diseases? The answer was not so terrifying. They would be isolated from the general population but they could interact with others who had similar diseases. Being monogamous creatures they might even form a pairing that would last a lifetime.

We understood the medical risks. We moved on to the next step. Purchasing the gibbons would create a whole other set of problems. By showing the owner he could make ten fold on his investment, assuming we didn’t negotiate his first offer, we would be fueling the market for the trade in endangered species. Our hearts sank. He was right and we knew it.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon talking with the good Doctor about their efforts at the project and he shared with us the expenses required to care for a gibbon for one year. He pulled out a spreadsheet with many calculations on it and shared a summary page with us. It came to something like $2,900 per month. That came to $35,000 per gibbon per year. It is more expensive to rehabilitate a gibbon in preparation for release into the wild than to send a bright human child to college for a year.

Our jaws dropped and all hope escaped with our next breath as we exhaled in a deep sigh of defeat. The good Doctor drove the nail home by telling us that the capacity of his facility was around seventy gibbons and had was currently caring for more than eighty, two babies having been delivered after being seized by the police in the last week. Our hearts were firmly resting in our soles. The loss of hope choked us up.

He sensed our disappointment and offered to show us around the facility. We could hear the gibbons out back whooping and calling. He led us to a cage inside the center and introduced us to the two recent arrivals. “Many of these gibbons are purchased for use in photographing tourists.” He explained and a twinge of guilt flashed over us for the picture that held center place on our website for the last three months. According to the good Doctor, an owner can purchase an infant gibbon as a pet and work full time allowing tourists to take photographs with the gibbon for $200 baht (US$5.00). On a good day an owner can make 2000 baht (USD$50.00). (Only ten pictures a day.) Considering the average wage in Thailand is $6000 baht per MONTH, with little effort a local can make ten times the average wage per month. The pure economics are hard to argue with. Enforcement of the law is very inconsistent with widespread corruption among the police force and investigations of other crime taking priority.

He showed us a video CD of the gentle singing apes sailing through the jungles dangling from branch to branch. The good Doctor told us how twenty years ago gibbons could be found on Phuket and the surrounding areas. But now their songs fell silent and none remained in the wild here until the rehabilitation project was begun. Several attempts to reintroduce gibbons on an island dedicated to them have resulted in limited success but they're still trying to figure out how to make it work.

We gave him the location of Julia Roberts and Romeo and he said he would call the owner to assess his intentions. He shared with us the horror stories of gibbons being used as entertainment in bars and being given alcohol, tobacco and drugs not to mention keeping them awake until late hours of the morning. (Gibbons in their natural habitat bed down at sunset and awaken to welcome the sun with their songs as it breeches the horizon.) We wondered if Julia Roberts and Romeo had it that bad. They both had trees in which to play and their long leashes allowed them to move around quite a bit. The rationalizations had begun. But what else could we do?

The good Doctor mentioned several times that he was in dire need of volunteers and instantly Earth Watch came to mind. His noble efforts with the gibbons and having the infrastructure to support a volunteer staff combined with the excellent location of nearby vacation attractions (beaches, jungles, islands, etc.) would make a great location for an Earth Watch expedition which currently offers no research projects in Thailand.

We had found our cause. We would act as a middleman to introduce the GRP to the staff at Earth Watch to create a dialogue which could result in a steady stream of a certain demographic of volunteer, complete with fat wallets, to support and expand the project's noble cause. He seemed cautiously skeptical as one could guess how many inspired and well-intentioned tourists had promised the good Doctor some assistance only never to be heard from again. In Bali, we began our campaign.

As we thanked him for his time, Dr. Pannadee mentioned that he was eager to reintroduce a family of four gibbons into the forest of the National Park but was unable to set a date without additional volunteers to assist not only in the laborious effort required to hoist a heavy cage of four gibbons up into the tree tops but to also observe and monitor their behavior after their release. He asked if we were interested in helping. We were very interested but we had purchased our plane tickets to leave Thailand the following day. We asked him to notify us of the dates via email and we would attempt to alter our travel schedule to assist.

We left a fair sized donation to the project and drove back towards Phuket having been educated on the plight of the gibbons in Thailand. Education was the first step. Action is the next. Stay tuned. In the weeks after our visit Romeo’s whooping songs continue to echo through our ears and we hear the call. We’ve got some plans to help. Hang in there baby!

"Only if we understand can we care. Only if we care will we help. Only if we
help shall all be saved." - Dr. Jane Goodall

To view pictures of the Gibbons

If you would like to learn more about WAR, an organization that is helping to save the gibbons and other animals from extinction in Thailand, visit there website. You can adopt a gibbon and receive monthly updates on it's progress towards being released back in to the wild!

www.warthai.org

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