Monkey business threatens Gibbons
17-02-2010 VietNamBridge Net, Vietnam
VietNamNet Bridge - As poachers and hunters continue to kill gibbons, conservation groups are working hard to rescue and protect the existing population.
At dawn they wake and open their mouths to sing a rising crescendo that ends with a sound like a Star Wars laser fight. The song can be heard for kilometres and is used to signal their location and social status.
Khoi arrived at the Cat Dao Centre in June 2009 after being confiscated by Wildlife at Risk. Khoi is a young male born in 2007 and has spent quite some time without any gibbon company, thus it does not understand gibbon communication.
"We don’t get to sleep in around here," the education officer at the Cat Dao Endangered Primate Centre, Wendy Derham, said about the golden cheeked gibbons’ early morning wake-up call.
The 39-year-old no-nonsense woman from Southern England’s job at the centre Cat Tien National Park in Dong Nai Province is visiting local schools to raise awareness about primate conservation in Viet Nam. The centre opened about 18 months ago.
The centre is currently setting up a fenced 20ha semi-wild area where a bonded pair of the golden cheeked gibbons will be released some time this year.
The centre occupies a 57ha island in the middle of the Dong Nai River, so along with the fence the river will provide a natural border around the perimetre.
The main centre comprises of a semi-cleared area with 10 two-storey house-size cages set well off the path. It is forbidden for visitors to the centre, which is a ten-minute boat ride from the national park’s headquarters, to leave the path or approach the cages.
Derham says all human contact with the gibbons, even with centre workers, is minimised to facilitate the primates’ rehabilitation to the wild and to protect them from diseases. (Gibbons as lesser apes are closely related to humans and susceptible to human diseases such as herpes and TB).
Cat Dao currently has mainly golden cheek gibbons, though it plans to house three other species of primate that are indigenous to the area – black shanked douc langurs and silvery doucs, which are species of old world monkeys, and the tiny, incredibly cute but poisonous primate, the loris.
Cat Dao’s primary purpose is to rehabilitate primates to release into Cat Tien National Park.
"Each animal will be collared when they are released. Post release monitoring is really important. We will be looking for Vietnamese university students to help with the monitoring," Derham says adding that the monitors’ presence in the park would also play a part in deterring poachers.
Any time of the day when a gibbon at Cat Dao starts singing, it kicks off an almost deafening chorus from the entire centre’s population of over 20 animals. (Check out the sound gallery at http://www.gibbons.de/ to hear the gibbon songs.) Their songs could easily be mistaken for a bird.
They live in small family groups of Mum, Dad and offspring and have a territory of about 55ha. Gibbons mate for life and don’t reach sexual maturity until they are nearly eight years old.
The gibbon mating pairs are relatively easy to build artificially in the centre, Derham says.
Another primate species native to Viet Nam that often are orphaned by poachers or confiscated by rangers for transfer to primate rescue centres are the black shanked douc langurs, which live in large extended groups.
It is much more difficult to rehabilitate them for release because of the problems establishing larger groups artificially in the centre. Douc langurs are territorial, so there is no chance that a lone animal will be accepted into an existing wild group and they can not survive alone.
Gibbons have much better prospects for release and Derham says it will be the important work of the monitors to see if the gibbon pairs that bond at the centre stay together or if they split up and pair with other wild gibbons of their own choice.
Their greater ability to adapt and survive means that most of the gibbons there have been brought in as adults after being volunteered or surrendered by owners that kept them for years as pets, tourist attractions at petrol stations or mascots.
Derham says many of the gibbons were volunteered happily by their "owners", as they wanted their beloved pets to have partners and families.
Doucs or douc langurs on the other hand normally only come to the centres as orphaned babies, because they don’t often survive with their illegal keepers until adulthood.
The trade in wild primates is tragic with hunters shooting or snaring the adults for their meat and their bones for medicine and selling their babies for pets.
One of the rangers, who has worked at the park for 18 years and co-operated with the Cat Dao Centre since it opened, Do Ngoc Tuan, says poachers get VND16 million for an adult and VND30 million for a mother and baby pair.
Tuan says that gibbons are easier to find in the wild than douc langurs because they can be located by their song.
He says he knew of at least 16 wild gibbon families in the park and there were also a lot of douc langurs.
Derham praises Tuan and all the rangers, called kiem lam in Vietnamese, for their enthusiasm and dedication in protecting the animals in the park.
She says the director of the park Tran Van Thanh, who facilitates and organises the collaboration between the forest rangers and the police for the successful confiscation of illegally kept primates, is so committed to conservation it is "like a breath of fresh air".
She says, "The more centres there are – the more rescues can take place".
Derham who has worked with primates for 12 years has a soft spot for five juvenile golden cheeked gibbons that live in the centre’s nursery.
She affectionately calls them "the terrorists", because of their boisterous energy. They range in age from one year to four years and won’t be ready for release until they are sexually mature at eight years old, because "There is no point releasing a gibbon that can’t protect its territory".
Recently the "terrorists" were released into a mini semi wild area, and have been learning a lot about how trees are engineered for swinging. They have had some surprises as they practised the art of moving around the jungle. A few badly timed swings and poor choices of branches to dangle off have landed them on their backsides.
Derham says, "It is very hard to resist having contact with them, because they are so cute, but it is necessary for their health and future rehabilitation to the wild."
Michael Smith - VNS
(Bron: http://english.vietnamnet.vn/)
(Bron foto: VietNamNet Bridge)
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