In 2025, EAST will return Hoi and Vang back to the wild. These critically endangered golden-cheeked gibbons need your help! Hoi, a young male and his young female Vang are fit to fill the forest with gibbon song once again, but desperately need your help sourcing telemetry tracking equipment and supporting a tracking team. Can you support them in 2025 by donating, or taking part in a sponsored event?

How You Can Help

Are you a super swimmer like a silvered langur? Or maybe, you’re fast like a gibbon or slow and steady like a loris? Did you know that gibbons are the fastest arboreal mammal, moving up to speeds of 55 km per hour! Fundraising for EAST at your next sporting event is a unique opportunity to give back to the Earth’s forests, which provide so much for humanity. Run, walk, bike, swim or move in any way with us to help us reach our fundraising goal.

Hoi & Vang’s Story

Both gibbons were transferred to Dao Tien in 2016 when infants, underweight and frightened. The Team immediately tried to place the infants with surrogate mothers to give them the best chance, however unusually, not successfully for the infants. Vang appeared scared of adult females, while Hoi was the complete opposite and was overzealous, trying to hug, suckle, rugby tackle his surrogate mum - all at once! The decision was made that although an adult role model would have been best, at this time each other was what they needed and could cope with, soon becoming best buddies! They progressed well and moved to a forested enclosure, where they thrived. Their progress hasn’t been linear, with the young pair having to make a return to the cage when Hoi started to approach humans – an overconfident teenager! However, in 2023 they were given a second chance in the trees, a little more mature, and they excelled and are on track for release in 2025.

What They Need

To allow us to follow Hoi & Vang after release, we use telemetry collars. The collars allow us to monitor the gibbons, intervene if any problems and importantly learn how gibbons behave post release for one year. Without the collars we are likely to soon lose the gibbons in the continuous forest of South Vietnam. We know from previous releases the behaviour is complex. Gibbons have a flexible social system, so they do not simply go back to the forest and live happily ever after as a family unit. There is a good chance Vang will check out wild males before re-settling with Hoi. We need to be with them all the way, monitoring, supporting & learning. The satellite collars, which are needed to keep track, costs around £2400 each-please consider donating if you can, to help us to return these gibbons home, and understand post-release behaviour. With this knowledge many more gibbons can be fast tracked to successful release back to the wild.

THANK YOU