Help Bring Wildlife Back to Angkor Forest

Below is a special update about our released gibbons at Angkor from our Wildlife Programs Director, Nick Marx!

Our work to restore appropriate species of wildlife into the Angkor Temples forest continues at a slow and steady pace. Not as fast as I would like but this is perhaps a good thing. Better the job is done properly. Pileated gibbons Baray, Saranick, our first releases conducted in December 2013 and their two year old baby, Ping-peeung (Spider) are well. They occasionally travel a short distance from the area in which they can usually be found, but never too far and they always return at feed time. The supplementary food we continue to provide has proved a useful tool to keep them in a safe area away from Temple visitors. Spider becomes more adventurous by the day, travelling independently of his mother now, though never too far away. After the early morning feed playtime usually follows, with the three ragging around together, a melee of arms and legs, before heading off on the day’s business. “Family” is such an important aspect of many animals’ lives and gibbons are no exception. The pleasure and depth a mother – and in many cases a father also – gets from her young makes one realize we are not the only sentient beings in the world.

Bayon and Tevy, the second pair of gibbons we released in June 2015, are also well. Their baby, born at the very end of June this year, seems well and is developing very quickly. He has fur already and seems to be beginning to recognize his environment and noises going on around him. We have christened him A-ping, Khmer for ground spider like a tarantula.

Our animals are not eating quite so much supplemental food we provide at present, clearly because there is plenty of fruit currently to be found in the forest. It is significant that our gibbons seldom if ever call, male and female singing their gibbon song that makes this species famous. This could be because there are currently only two pairs in the forest and there is no need to advertise their presence or protect their territory from other gibbons. However, on August 30th it was a pleasure to hear for the first time Baray and Saranick duetting together.