Gibbons

Tucked away on the back roads of a quiet southern town, surrounded by the very gibbons she has vowed to protect, Dr. Shirley McGreal and her dedicated staff work to make the world a better place for all primates. The whoop-whoop-wooing of the gibbons’ happy songs outside their office windows, are a constant reminder that they are keeping that promise.

Dr. McGreal has wrapped her heart and her life around the gibbons in the IPPL sanctuary as firmly and resolutely as a mother gibbon embraces her young.  Through her letters, phone calls, petitions, and investigations, she has protected, defended, and rescued gibbons and primates around the globe for the past 35 years. She believes that primates, like all other wildlife, deserve to live the most natural and happiest life possible—without the danger of humans harming them.

Dr. McGreal, originally form Cheshire, England, traveled to India and Thailand to study in the 1970’s. While living in Bangkok, Thailand, Dr. McGreal saw gibbons, monkeys, and lorises crowded into crates at the Bangkok Airport. She saw all kinds of wildlife for sale at the Bangkok Weekend Market, and watched people carry baby gibbons through the hotels to be used as photo props. She soon learned that poachers and animal smugglers captured these babies by shooting their mothers high in the treetops.

And then Dr. McGreal discovered where these gibbons and monkeys were being taken:

• To labs to undergo cruel experiments and be separated from each other.
• To animal collectors who fed them dry monkey chow and put them in cages with no room to stretch their long arms and swing.
• To pet stores where they were sold to people who would tire of the primates when they reached adult size and became less cuddly and friendly.

That’s when Dr. McGreal made a promise, a promise to create an organization solely for the protection of primates.

She started reading everything about primates she could find. One of the books she read called The Apes was written by Professor Vernon Reynolds of Oxford University, England. She contacted Dr. Reynolds about her plans to create the International Primate Protection League.. He wrote back immediately, told her it was a wonderful idea, and volunteered to be a member of her committee! That was a defining moment of Dr. McGreal’s life! And from the day Dr. McGreal founded this organization, she has never ever considered doing anything else with her life.

Thirty-five years later, the International Primate Protection League consists of members in more than 32 different countries around the world. Experts from the fields of zoology, anthropology, medicine, biology, psychology, and veterinary medicine contribute their knowledge as IPPL Board Members.

We wondered exactly what IPPL does to save primates and how its members do it. We discovered that IPPL members have many interesting, exciting, rewarding, and at times dangerous jobs:

• They work as conservationists to help create national parks and sanctuaries – safe places for primates to live.
• As activists, they write letters and make phone calls, they pressure governments to ban primate hunting, trapping, and trading.
• They even work as detectives exposing primate smuggling and abuse by studying import documents—often working dangerous undercover jobs to infiltrate and expose greedy animal traders.

By keeping a steady watch on countries that import primates, the members monitor just where the monkeys and apes are being placed. And then they visit the primates at the zoos and labs to be sure they are treated humanely.

One of their most rewarding jobs is that of caretaker . Members rescue gibbons, chimpanzees, orangutans and many other primate species that have been injured, abandoned, neglected, or discarded. Through loving care and proper nutrition, these special animals are brought back to good health. If possible, they are released back into the wild. If not, a home is provided for them in one of over 30 sanctuaries around the world where they live contentedly with members of their own species.

Finally, IPPL members work as educators. They teach children how important it is to protect primates. They teach adults how to preserve the rain forests where gibbons and other primates live, not destroy them. They instruct adults on what products to avoid purchasing in order to preserve the rain forests.

Since 1973, Dr. McGreal and her IPPL members have saved many primates around the world:

In the 1970’s, IPPL exposed a dangerous network of smugglers who were killing mother gibbons in Thailand, stealing their babies, and exporting them to the United States. During Project Bangkok Airport, college students helped Dr. McGreal expose the terrible conditions that wildlife from Thailand was being exported in. The result, a ban on the export of all primates for Thailand! IPPL also exposed the cruel treatment of Rhesus monkeys exported from India for radiation experiments. India then banned all primate exports saving hundreds of thousands of monkeys’ lives!

In the 1980’s, IPPL continued to interfere with and stop the cruel treatment of monkey and other primates in labs around the world, saving many gibbons and chimpanzees. IPPL also stopped the illegal import of gorillas and orangutans by a Miami animal dealer. After letter writing and protest by thousands of IPPL members, the animal dealer was thrown in jail. IPPL also raised money to continue the work of Dian Fossey, a brave woman who spent her life fighting to protect gorillas from poachers.

In the 1990’s and 2000’s, Dr. McGreal and her IPPL members continued working every day to save hundreds of thousands of primates through investigations, letters, phone calls, and petitions. Many of these species are classified as endangered on the CITES – Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species lists. If people like Dr. McGreal and IPPL do not work to protect them, they may become extinct, and we will lose them forever!

There are almost as many species of primates as there are days in the year. And each species of primate is unique and special.  They range in size from the tiny pygmy mouse lemur that weighs about an ounce to the gorilla weighing up to 600 pounds! Some, like the lemurs and lorises of Asia and Africa are secretive creatures of the night, with huge eyes that reflect light. Others like the chimpanzees and bonobos use tools intelligently just like man. And some are gentle giants like the gorillas who would rather fade into the dense jungle than stay and fight.  To lose even one of these incredible species because we didn’t care is not acceptable.

Each of the IPPL member organizations devote themselves to conservation and protection of primate species native to their area, or to primates imported into their area that need sanctuary.

Dr. McGreal, of course, devotes her sanctuary in South Carolina to the rescue and care of the smallest of the ape family, the gibbon, the acrobats of the southeast Asian forests. As of this episode, all of the IPPL gibbons except one belong to the Hylobates lar species, the white-handed gibbon. These gibbons, an endangered species, can have either golden or black coloring. The males and females are similar in size. In the wild, these gibbons live alongside orangutans, sun bears and thousands of other frogs, snakes, insects, and vividly colored birds, 60 to 90 feet above the forest floor in an area called the rain forest canopy.

Dr. McGreal was eager to introduce us to the gibbons so that we could share them with you. The IPPL sanctuary is not open to the public because Dr.. McGreal never wants it to become a zoo.

Her wish is for the gibbons to live there peacefully and comfortably, and to enjoy a life with as many choices as possible.

We were greeted by a chorus of whoop-whop-wooing as we entered IPPL’s gibbon sanctuary, and immediately felt we had left the south behind and entered a Thai rain forest. With their melodious voices, the songs of the gibbons can be heard up to a mile away. The females sing the melody and the males join in the duet.  Fortunately for IPPL’s human neighbors, the gibbon sanctuary sits on a spacious 10 acre location; Trees and tall plants surround the beautifully landscaped property, along with a generous buffer zone of land.

Gibbons demonstrate a great capacity for warmth and compassion. They are the only ape species that choose and raise their young with one lifelong mate. When Dr. McGreal introduces a new single gibbon into the sanctuary, she is already searching for a future mate for that gibbon That’s the choice a gibbon would make if it were out in the rain forest. A gibbon paired with a well-suited mate will be a happy gibbon indeed. And Dr. McGreal wants to give each and every gibbon a chance at happiness.

With both hands and feet that can grasp and hold branches and other objects, gibbons have incredible dexterity. Their hands have opposable thumbs like humans that enable them to pick tiny berries and bamboo shoots. By deftly grasping branches and vines, the gibbons seem to almost fly through the trees!  Some gibbons can fly as fast as 30 miles per hour!

Dr. McGreal once said,”Gibbons are the most wonderful animals because they sing like Pavarotti and they swing like Nadia Comaneci, and they have delightful dispositions—they’re really poetry in motion.”

We wondered how the gibbons stayed so clean. Their thick silky fur was fluffy and shiny. Every hair on their little black faces outlined in white showed no signs of earlier fresh fruit meals. Dr. McGreal told us that like other apes, the gibbons spend hours grooming themselves and each other.  It’s a way for them to bond and show affection and trust.

IPPL spends what seems like a fortune on fresh fruits and vegetables for the gibbons. But Dr. McGreal wouldn’t think of feeding them any other way.  The gibbons enjoy strawberries, mangoes, papayas, green beans, peas, broccoli, kale, oranges, among other fresh foods…and of course bananas! In the springtime and early summer, the gardens at IPPL are chock full of home-grown goodies like blueberries, figs, and grapes—the gibbons just love plucking these off the bushes and trees themselves! They even have their own bamboo patch!

The more we listened to Dr. McGreal, the more we realized how terribly wrong it is to illegally catch baby gibbons and other primates and separate them from their own kind. When she showed us photos of lonely apes sitting in too-small cages by themselves we wondered why people can’t understand how lonely and depressing this is for the primates, especially for apes who have an incredible intelligence.  We certainly understood!

Primates like gibbons that are separated from their mothers at a young age cannot learn how to properly raise their own young. In labs or unfit zoos where young gibbons are born, the mothers sometimes reject or even harm or kill their own young.

That’s exactly how Dr. McGreal adopted IPPL’s very first gibbon. The day of this gibbon’s birth, he was found on the floor of his cage in a cancer research laboratory in California. His mother, not knowing how to care for a baby, rejected him. The little gibbon was tattooed HL-98 and put in a cage with a surrogate mother—a wire tube covered by a towel. Unfortunately, HL-98 was constantly ill and never seemed to gain much weight or grow uncertain. IPPL heard about HL-98 and immediately started investigating . When they heard that all of the gibbons except HL-98 were going to be placed with zoos, they put the wheels in motion for his adoption. Finally, at the age of two years, this little gibbon, who was renamed Arun Rangsi or Rooie for short,  arrived safely at the IPPL gibbon sanctuary.

He has successfully found a lifelong mate there, Shanti, and had several beautiful gibbon babies. Although he had no parents as role models, Arun became the exception to every rule. He became a model parent and model husband, and still lives quite happily at IPPL.

From his ample enclosure, which includes plenty of climbing and swinging space, he can watch all the other inhabitants of the sanctuary—his fellow gibbons, the dogs, the otters, and the wild birds that come to feed and sing in the gardens.

Each of the gibbons at IPPL has a very special personal history which Dr, McGreal knows by heart and eagerly shared with us. We wonder how she keeps all the stories straight! Her affection and dedication to each of the gibbons is noticeable immediately, and each gibbon responded to the familiar sound of her voice as we walked from one spacious enclosure to the next. Clearly Dr. McGreal’s heart is in the right place!

Dr. McGreal and IPPL have received international honors such as the United Nations Environment Program Global 500, the Marchig Award for Animal Welfare, an award from the Interpol Dutch Police, and just recently an award from the Queen of England! To people around the world and to the primates she is saving, Dr. McGreal is a hero! But she believes that each of us can be a hero in our own way and that each person has more power to change things than they realize.

Caring about and respecting wildlife is the right thing to do. We’re grateful to people like Dr. McGreal who have kept their promise to the primates. The solution to threatened and endangered species seems simple: Let primates remain in their natural habitat where they can happily sing, swing, forage for food, and raise their young. If we can allow them to do this, these precious primates will be around for many years to come.

You too can make an incredible difference by reading, learning, and supporting organizations like the International Primate Protection League. After all, it’s your planet too!

www.ippl.org