Gibbon Rehabilitation Project

The Gibbon Rehabilitation Project is a wildlife sanctuary in the forest around Bang Pae waterfall, in Phuket, Thailand, rescuing and reintroducing gibbons taken from the wild for tourism. It's the only facility in the world with a meaningful track record of releasing rehabilitated gibbons back into the wild, after its first successful release in 2002 followed years of trial and error. Phuket's own wild gibbon population was poached to extinction roughly 40 years ago, largely to supply the tourist photo trade, and the project works to repopulate the island's last remaining rainforest, Khao Phra Thaeo, with descendants of animals rescued from that same trade. Around 400 gibbons have passed through the project since it was founded in 1992, with roughly 100 released and more than 60 still in care, some too physically or psychologically damaged to ever go back.

Visitors watch from at least two metres away, through bars, with no touching, feeding or flash photography. This is a working rehabilitation centre, not a photo opportunity, and daily visitor numbers are capped at 36. Slow lorises rescued alongside the gibbons can never be released at all because their teeth are typically pulled or filed down by former owners to prevent their mildly venomous bite, leaving them unable to survive independently.