Ok so I really love Gibbons they have to be one of my favourite animals families (amoungst others) but I really wanted to pose some questions to my fellow animal & conservation fans here. So Hainan Gibbons are in serious peril unfortunately (is it less than 25 individual now yikes!!) but i wondered if the Chinese government hypothetically permitted it could a captive breeding program potentially work fast enough to save these wonderful animals from being extinct or will enough be done to try and do that by the hard work of individuals who will work with them in the wild of Hainan in order to save their numbers? My other question is if (I'm Australian from Sydney so Aus Zoos and their animal species are what I'm most familiar with) if one was to imagine the wonderful opportunity (if no expense was spared to quote Hammond from jurassic park lol) to open a state of the art zoo and one of the focuses (well five individual focuses) was to have five different species of Gibbon within that zoo, what five species would be the most relevant to try and house in terms of relevant focus on most endangered in the wild and also to try and be a bit realistic, the availability of an already existing breeding program in other zoos in the world (US, Canada, Aus, NZ, Japan, Singapore, Europe only to name a few) that house individuals of Gibbon species in breeding programs support. My instinct would be to want at least three of them to be Northern White-Cheeked Gibbons, Silvery/Javan Gibbons & Kloss/Mentawai Gibbons. Hainan Gibbons would be my daydream but I suspect currently that is really not within the realms of reality. Amoungst all other Gibbons that a i love would love to have a home for Siamangs, Pileateds, Agiles, Bornean Greys & Hoolocks (Eastern or Western) but am trying to think realistically and unless the zoo was a specific Gibbon Conservation Center like the one in California I dont know if that'd be possible (am aware thanks to another member {Tetrapod} that Perth Zoo pretty much kept a pair of every known member of the Gibbon family from the 70s through to mid 90s when they either had died or were transferred elsewhere, except for the Silveries and the Northern White-Cheeks who are still alive and or represented by new individuals). So to get back to a basic question I wanted to pose to more knowledgeable minds, what five species in the Gibbon family in terms of critical endangered and endangered would be the best to focus on housing if possible and current conservation efforts were to be considered??
