Gibbon Rehabilitation Project

We hiked up to the largest waterfall in Phuket, the Bang Pae waterfall, which was full of families with children going for a swim. The base of the waterfall was no larger than 1.5 meters wide but plucky teenagers dived down from tremendous heights. There really was not much room for any dives fancier than a straight pencil dip.

Nearby is the tremendous Gibbon Project which is a rehabilitation initiative for gibbons that have been captured and sold as pets or dragged around for entertainment and money making purposes. Some people will go into the jungles for the sole purpose of capturing a baby gibbon which usually results in 4 or 5 killed gibbons for each captured baby. They are often drugged and dragged around to bars, beaches, and resorts in hopes that tourists will pay to take a photo with one. The volunteers at the Gibbon Project track down this illegal business and bring the gibbons back to this sanctuary in hopes of one day releasing them back into the wild. They try to match gibbons together so as to start families but gibbons mate for life and are understandably choosy. Successful gibbon families are released into the wild and monitored for 2 years where they are slowly weaned off depending on humans for food.

I think its an amazing initiative and for anyone who is interested, they are always looking for volunteers! The project is also run solely by donations and more info can be found at http://www.gibbonproject.org/