By Nick Marx | Wildilfe Programs Director
Below is a special update about our released animals at Angkor from our Wildlife Programs Director, Nick Marx!
As the animals at Angkor begin to settle into their new lives in the forest, we are beinning to see things play out much like a soap opera - except there is no script and it's a lot more interesting! We follow happy family, pileated gibbons Baray, Saranick and Spider, their baby, as they enjoy their daily life and the freedom of the forest. Spider or Pingpeeung grows in size and confidence as he becomes more independent, leaving Saranick, his mother, for longer periods of time and climbing higher in the trees. In August, mother and father had a brief spat as they fed on the supplementary food we continue to provide twice each day. I have no idea what the cause was, but Baray stormed off after a scolding from the wife! Saranick continued to feed for a short while before taking herself off into the trees. Baray ignored her, showing his indifference, but followed a little while later. We know they do not need the food we give them, as they survived for six months following their release without touching it. However, we see this as a management tool. It helps us keep the gibbons in an area we know they are safe. When taxi and tuctuc drivers knew we had released the gibbons they started taking guests to see them, trying to tempt them down from the trees with fruit in an attempt to earn a few extra dollars. We do not want our animals becoming familiar with the visitors to the Angkor Temples. We do not see “release” as an immediate action that begins and ends when the door of the release cage is opened. It is a long process and it is not necessarily the animals we release that we see as the final step, but their grandchildren and
great grandchildren that have not yet been born. We must ensure that nothing happens in the early stages to impede the progress of the ones that follow.
The "drama" unfolded a couple of kilometers away, where we released Bayon and Tevy, the second pair of gibbons and our trio of silvered langurs. We released the langurs and initially they continued to feed at their release enclosure. We moved them away by around 300 meters when we released Bayon and Tevy because we saw that Bayon, the male gibbon, was protective and territorial. Tevy has remained solidly close by the release enclosure. You will remember her early introduction to life in the trees nearly ended in disaster. Inexperienced, she used weak branches to travel along, which broke and at least twice plummeted earthwards, saving herself from injury or worse by catching herself on the under story just inches from the ground. She has learned and is now becoming braver, venturing higher up in the trees and traveling a little farther away. Bayon, who was captured in the forest of Koh Kong before he was rescued, has explored further.
Bayon found the released langurs and attacked them, driving the male off on August 22nd. Job done, he immediately returned to his old enclosure to feed with Tevy. We lost track of the male langur, but found him uninjured three days later, 1 kilometer to the north. The females continued to feed at the old feeding site, but we were concerned as Bayon clearly did not like their company! On August 27th, Sarin and his son, Mr Rith, our most excellent staff with the responsibility of watching our animals in Angkor, managed to catch the two gibbons in their old release enclosure and persuaded the female langurs to follow them to another site in the forest near 1 kilometer away. They reunited them with the male and Rith erected three new feeding platforms for the langurs. Problem solved and the gibbons were released again on August 31st.
The langurs now seem to be a little more wary of people, which is not a bad thing. They are also becoming much less dependant on our food. They disappeared without a trace at the beginning of September, despite Mr Rith’s efforts to find them. We were not worried. Langurs are predominantly leaf eaters, of which there are plenty in most Asian forests! They returned to feed at their new platforms on September 21st.
New characters to the story are our five common palm civets from WRS. We did not want to release them at WRS as there are already many civets in the forest there and we were also worried that they may predate on the mynah birds we release. The civets have settled well and should have no trouble adapting to their new home in the Angkor forest when we release them in a few months’ time.
Thank you for you incredible support, and for helping give these threatened and endangered animals a chance at life in the wild!
By Sheena Thiruselvan | Assistant Director of Communications
By Sheena Thiruselvan | Assistant Director of Communications
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