In Indonesia’s Central Java province, two groups of Javan gibbons have become isolated in two small forest patches. To help the gibbons make their way to larger forest areas, a local NGO, SwaraOwa, is working with farmers in the region to restore and build “corridors” that would connect the fragmented forest blocks, Mongabay reported in a video published in June.
Javan gibbons (Hylobates moloch), known locally as owa, are only found on the island of Java and are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List. Only 4,000 individuals are thought to remain in the wild, with many confined to increasingly fragmented forest patches due to logging, agriculture and infrastructure.
Two such Javan gibbon groups, one with five members and the other with four, live in two tiny forest patches isolated from a larger forest area by farms and settlements. The gibbons have little canopy cover to move between the forests.
“From about 2000 until the end of 2010, hunting of primates was still massive, especially gibbons and langurs. Sometimes people hunted them to sell their meat, sometimes to sell their offspring,” Alex Rifai, a farmer from Mendolo village, said in the video.
But then SwaraOwa (“Sound of the owa” in Indonesian) started educating farmers about the biodiversity treasure on their doorstep: that the Javan gibbon is one of five primate species on the island that’s found nowhere else on Earth. “That was a point of pride for us, we were like, ‘Wow, we have to protect them,’” Rifai recalled.
SwaraOwa reforestation coordinator Sidiq Harjanto said they drew up a map showing how the forest blocks where the two gibbon groups lived were no longer connected to the larger nearby forest. “That is actually a pretty critical condition,” he said.
After realizing the dire state of the gibbons, the NGO and farmers launched a community-based conservation scheme.
“Some of the village youths were also recently concerned about the decline in quality of the forest, so we carried out tree planting,” Harjanto said.
In 2023, young farmers from Mendolo started cultivating native pucung (Pangium edule) and timber trees in a nursery, which they then planted in the Mendolo village forest. By 2024, the group had planted 500 trees; it aims to reach 800 trees planted by the end of two years.
“Our motivation as young people is that future generations will not just hear stories about the gibbons, they’ll be able to see them from their backyards if they want,” said Rohim, a Mendolo farmer.
Besides supporting gibbons, the newly planted trees will also help with water conservation and prevent landslides, SwaraOwa researchers said.
The gibbon population in this mountainous part of Java has increased to 1,000 in 2023 from about 800 individuals 10 years ago. “That’s given us optimism that the future for the gibbons in this area looks bright,” said SwaraOwa gibbon researcher Arif Setiawan.
Watch the full Mongabay video here.
Banner image of a Javan gibbon, courtesy of Nanang Sujana.
This story first appeared on Mongabay
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