Gibbons are the most speciose family of apes, yet all 20 species face serious threats. Their welfare depends on continuous forest canopy that fragmentation increasingly denies them.
Gibbon welfare combines the acute suffering of individual animals caught in the pet trade with the chronic welfare compromise of populations living in fragmented habitats that cannot support their arboreal lifestyle. Gibbons cannot walk on the ground — they brachiate through the forest canopy and are essentially helpless at ground level. A road or cleared gap that a deer or peccary could walk across is an impassable barrier for a gibbon. This means that even relatively small habitat disruptions cause population fragmentation with welfare consequences for individuals unable to access food resources or mates across the gap. Canopy bridges — ropes or natural vegetation linking forest fragments across roads — represent an elegant, low-cost welfare and conservation intervention that several successful programs have demonstrated.