Project/Volunteers' Life

Volunteers work a 6-day week usually for 8 hours per day. The routine work is divided into 4 main tasks.

Quarantine and Rehabilitation Site : this involves food preparation, feeding, cage maintenance, cleaning, enrichment, and observation (health check, vaginal check).

Reintroduction Site : this involves forest-feeding, mapping and trail maintenance, follow-up and data collection.

Conservation Education and Fund-raising : volunteers will give talk to tourists, educating them about the problems gibbon face and selling merchandise.

Details of Project/Volunteer’s life

Quarantine and Rehabilitation site:  

Food Preparation

The gibbons are fed a mixture of leaves, vegetables and fruits. The food is delivered every other day from the local fruit and vegetable market. When we receive the food, it needs to be divided-up for the two sites. Before feeding it to the gibbons, all foods are washed thoroughly. This removes any traces of fertilizers or other residues that may be harmful to the gibbons. It will then be cut into pieces small enough for it to fit through the bars of the cage and divided into carrying baskets. We have different carrying baskets for the gibbons with different diseases in hopes of reducing the likelihood of the diseases spreading.

Feeding  

We feed the gibbons twice a day. The first feeding is at 6:30 in the morning and consists mainly of leaves and vegetables. We then feed them fruits after lunch - as well as given fresh water. The majority of the cages have long distance feeding systems, so volunteers can place the food in baskets and then use ropes to pull the basket closer to the cage. At our rehabilitation site, we also have water systems on a number of the cages, which mean that we can turn on taps to fill up the water bottles. Both of these systems mean that people do not need to get close to the cages - ensuring that human involvement with these gibbons is kept to a minimum.    

Cage Maintenance, Cleaning and Enrichment

Everyday duties at both our quarantine and rehabilitation site involve cleaning and maintaining the cages. Gibbons are naturally very clean animals with all their feces and waste food dropping to the forest floor far below them.  It is therefore important for us to keep their living environment as clean as possible.  It also helps prevent them from acquiring illnesses. Everyday all the faeces and old food is removed from the cage as well as the ground below. We also regularly clean their food baskets and water holders. Staff and volunteers complete any maintenance work that is required at the two sites. This may include building new cages, building steps, fixing holes in cages and enriching the cages. We try to provide places in the cages for the gibbons to sit or sleep, as well as ropes and swings that will provide them with entertainment and keep them active. The gibbons favorite activity is to destroy these enrichments so they regularly need replacing!

Observation : health check, vaginal check

An important aspect of looking after the gibbons is carrying out health inspections and observations. In this way, we can monitor the health and the progress of the gibbons through the rehabilitation process. Everyday, volunteers will complete a health inspection on all our gibbons. This involves checking their faeces and then checking there are no problems with their eyes, fur, limbs etc. At the same time, volunteers will record attributes of the female gibbons' vaginas. Females have a reproductive cycle where the size of the vagina increases and decreases during the month.  By recording the size of the vagina, and if the gibbon is menstruating, we can check if the female has reached sexual maturity and determines if said gibbon is pregnant.  We also carry out observations on the gibbons. These may be done for a number of reasons. For example: if the gibbon is sick and we are trying to pair two gibbons or if we are trying to choose a family for release. The observations mean that we record what the gibbon is doing every two minutes for an hour. This can show us what activities the gibbons are doing, where they are in their cage and how they interact with other gibbons. If we would like even more details on the gibbons they will be observed them for an entire day. In this case, two volunteers will record what the gibbons are doing every five minutes from 6:30 in the morning until 4:00 in the afternoon (when the gibbons begin to go to sleep).

Reintroduction Site    

Forest Feeding

We follow a soft release policy with our gibbons, which mean that we continue to feed them after they have been released into the forest. We feed the gibbons until they are able to find enough food for themselves. A group consisting of staff members and volunteers will go into the forest everyday to feed the released gibbons. We feed them sour fruits similar to the ones they can find in the forest. These are placed in food baskets which are on ropes attached to the trees, so we can lift the food high up into the trees. This feeding also gives us the opportunity to ensure that the gibbons are well.

Mapping and Trail Maintenance

In order to accurately follow and record the location of the gibbons, we have developed a map and grid system in the forest. Each family of gibbons we release requires an area for its territory. We need to map and record the territories of each group so we know where we can release a new group. Once we have chosen a family for release we prepare their territory by cutting trails in a grid system and placing tree markers. We can then record where the gibbons are within these areas when we are doing observations. The plants in the forest grow very quickly so our trails are often grown over, often demanding staff and volunteers to regularly venture into the forests to clear these and maintain the existing tracks. 

Follow-up and Data Collection

We collect follow-up data after we have released the gibbons. This is to make sure they are doing well, as well as record how they behave in the forest which, in turn, helps us to improve rehabilitation techniques in the future. When they are first released, staff members and volunteers go into the forest every day and carry out observations on the gibbons. As the gibbons get used to their surroundings, these observation days will be reduced. Finally, once we feel that they are fully rehabilitated, we will cease observing them. Observations start early in the morning (when the gibbons wake up) and continue until the gibbons are asleep in the late afternoon. Staff members and volunteers enter the forest before sunrise and attempt to find the gibbons in their sleeping trees. From here, they will then follow the gibbons for the rest of the day, recording what they are doing. Each observation day will have a focal gibbon, whose activities will be recorded every 2 minutes. A second observer will record what the remaining gibbons are doing every 10 minutes.  In this way, we record where the gibbons are in the forest, how high they are in the trees, what they are doing, how they interact with each other and what they are eating.  We record what trees they eat from and what foods they are eating. This often involves us taking photos and bringing back samples of the fruits they are eating, so that we can properly identify them.

Conservation Education and Fund-Raising

Volunteers work a number of days a week at Center for conservation, education and fundraising. Here, they give informative tours to members of the public. The desk is open from 9am until 4pm and volunteers spend the day talking to tourist and selling a variety of merchandise. We try to educate tourists about the problems gibbons face and encourage them not to support gibbons being used in captivity. Being that this project relies on money raised at the center, visitors are invited to make donations.

Additional Information

Volunteers may also be asked to help with other aspects of the project's work. This could include anything from teaching English in the local primary school, to doing leaflet drops around the beaches and helping to put on exhibitions about the project. They may also be involved in office work, which may include answering emails, writing letters and writing proposals.

 Do Not Groom Gibbons!

"It has been found that physical or emotional contact between keepers and gibbons can be more damaging than beneficial.  The arms of gibbons are very long and they are well known to habitually reach their arms through the cage and fencing and remove handfuls of the keeper's hair, so BE WARNED.  Gibbons are also found to be highly "jealous" primate species, and suffer greatly if attention is given to them at one time, but not at other times.  Human attention has also been observed to cause serious fights between mated pairs when attention was given more to one than another." AAZPA (American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums), 1984: For your own safety and so that the gibbons become less dependent on humans, we enforce minimum contact with the animals.  Once a gibbon is in an enclosure, it will begin to socialize with its fellow mates and should not depend on humans for grooming and affection.  Successful rehabilitation depends on this policy. NOTE: when the gibbons arrive at the project, our main concern is to not cause them too much stress.  This may mean, for example, that a gibbon that has been in captivity for a long period of time has not had any contact with any other gibbon and has been completely dependent on humans for affection.  He or she may require some attention by the volunteers in the initial stages to allow the relocation to be less stressful.  Gibbons are very social primates, and at some times, interaction with humans is necessary, but only in certain circumstances and for limited periods. Do not forget this animal has long arms and split second reflexes.  When in hair pulling range or finger munching distance of an aggressive animal, KEEP EYE CONTACT - DO NOT TURN YOUR BACK ON THEM.OR ELSE

Other: this could be normal office administrative tasks.  It should also be noted that volunteers are not allowed to handle the gibbons; physical contact is allowed only in the presence and under the supervision of the Thai staff. Also, there is a house rule policy that volunteers must follow as well as respect the culture and others.