Gibbons return to zoo this fall

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This article was published 04/05/2016 (3601 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Assiniboine Park Zoo is preparing to welcome back large primates of a non-human variety.

The Winnipeg zoo’s lion enclosure will be renovated to house white-handed gibbons later this year, the Assiniboine Park Conservancy announced Wednesday.

The zoo hasn’t housed large primates since 2014, when a family of lion-tailed macaques was moved out of an enclosure no longer deemed acceptable for the monkeys. The last gibbons — which are apes, not monkeys, and more closely related to humans — were moved out in 2011.

The zoo plans to renovate the indoor portion of the former lion enclosure this fall, when one male and one female white-handed gibbon will move into the structure, conservancy spokeswoman Laura Curtis said in a statement. The zoo hopes to renovate the outdoor portion of the enclosure by the spring of 2017.

White-handed gibbons, also known as lar gibbons, live in trees in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos and a corner of China. They’re listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, as they face the loss of their rainforest habitat and are also hunted for bushmeat.

The gibbons are part of a “species survival plan” that involves captive breeding with zoos. Curtis said Assiniboine Park Zoo hopes to house more of the apes in the future.

Their addition to the zoo will bring the number of primate species at the facility to four. It currently houses three small primate species, all native to South America or central America: critically endangered cotton-top tamarins, vulnerable Goeldi’s marmosets and squirrel monkeys, which are not endangered.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca