KHAO PHRA THAEO WILDLIFE SANCTUARY, Thailand — The white-handed gibbon, captured as an infant by poachers, was rescued from a grim life amusing inebriated visitors in tourist bars, then spent eight years in a cage at a rehabilitation center.
Now, this survivor of abuse and trauma lives in the jungle on Thailand’s Phuket island, where she was recently seen perched on a tree branch 50 feet above ground as her wild-born mate and their two offspring watched warily from nearby trees.
Hers is a rare success story.
Named Cop, after a police officer who aided in her rescue, she is part of a small colony of gibbons rescued, rehabilitated and released into Phuket’s largest remaining forest by the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project, a nonprofit group that rescues gibbons in Thailand.
“We now have 35 in the forest at Phuket, including those born in the wild,” said Thanaphat Payakkaporn, general…
