A gibbon mother usually picks up her newborn baby, cleans it, and holds it 24 hours a day for the first two or three months. Oula, a fluffy gray Javan gibbon who lives at the Gibbon Conservation Center (GCC) in the Santa Clarita Valley, didn’t seem to know what to do with the tiny, almost furless creature who needed her warmth to survive.
Gabriella Skollar, director of the center, entered Oula’s enclosure and cradled the little ape, fearing that he might not make it.
As Skollar held him, the tiny gibbon, who would be named Rocky, began to sing, a characteristic of gibbons, who communicate and mark their territory with elaborate vocalizing. Their songs can reach an otherworldly chorus, which echoes through their native Asian rainforests and in Saugus, where 40 gibbons live in spacious metal enclosures on five acres.
In this unlikely setting, amid suburban tract homes and horse farms, the nonprofit GCC protects and breeds gibbons. The center is the only organization worldwide to house all four gibbon genera. Within those genera, the center is home to five species: the vulnerable eastern hoolock, the endangered Javan, the pileated gibbon, the glossy black siamang, and the critically threatened northern white-cheeked gibbon.
Gibbons are serially monogamous (with an occasional fling) and live in bonded family groups. “They kiss, they hug, they cuddle,” says Skollar. Offspring stay with their parents for 7 to 10 years before separating to create families of their own.
But their numbers are declining. They are hunted, their flesh and bones used in traditional medicine. Prized for their acrobatics and lush coats, they are captured and sold as pets. Their rainforest homes are rapidly being replaced by palm oil and rubber plantations.
“The idea is to create a safe population,” says Skollar, an adviser to the Gibbon Species Survival Plan (SSP), a program devoted to gibbon breeding, welfare, and management. “If something happens with them in the wild, they can use that population to repopulate areas.”
Among the GCC’s plans, a 12-year-old pileated gibbon will travel soon from Santa Clarita to a zoo in France, with the hope of mating. In a few years, when a white-cheeked gibbon is ready to mate, she will be transferred through the SSP to an as-yet-undetermined zoo.
The GCC was founded by Alan Mootnick, who fell in love with gibbons and their song on a zoo visit at age nine. After adopting spider monkeys and macaques to learn how to work with primates, Mootnick bought his first gibbon (named Spanky) through a newspaper ad in the 1970s. Mootnick then began to acquire rare species that he hoped would regenerate in captivity. In 1978, he created his Gibbon and Gallinaceous Bird Center (at that time, he also collected grouse, quail, and pheasant). To pay for the creatures’ upkeep on rented land in Chatsworth, he restored and painted houses, then sold his collection of vintage Jaguar cars. In 1980, he purchased the Santa Clarita site, and in 1990, he incorporated what would become the GCC as a nonprofit. He lived in a 726-square-foot house on the acreage.
“He worked literally 18 hours a day,” says his nephew Paul Weinberger.
By the time of his unexpected death, in 2011, at age 60, Mootnick had become a self-taught gibbon expert and researcher, with numerous peer-reviewed studies to his name, despite his lack of a college degree.
Skollar arrived at the center from Hungary in 2005 with a master’s degree in biology. She raked leaves, fed the apes, and studied their vocalizing. She cried all the way to the airport when her six-month visa expired. It took her another six months to return. By 2011, much as she loved working with Mootnick, she says she needed a brief break from his all-consuming passion. His death changed everything, and she committed to caring for the gibbons.
“There was no one else to do it,” she says.
Skollar lives in a tiny house on the property and runs the place with operations and development manager Alma Rodriguez, animal care specialist Sophia Paden, and an army of rigorously trained volunteers. They help erect and repair enclosures and feed the gibbons, who eat eight times a day, subsisting on a diet of carrots, sweet potatoes, bananas, apples, papaya, broccoli, mango, and watermelon, among other foods.
Rocky, who turned one in July, is still being hand-raised indoors. In the GCC office, he capers near a furry toy gibbon and a toddler’s plastic climbing frame. Leaping onto a chair, he swings from one of its arms, then jumps down to pad, upright, back to his handler.
When the weather is nice, Rocky plays outside near Oula and his father, Medina, so that they can get used to each other before they are fully introduced. Before that can happen, Rocky needs a temperature-controlled area built next to his parents’ enclosure where he can safely play, nap, and sleep, especially during his first few years. The GCC is starting to raise those funds.
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Following Mootnick’s death, Skollar has come to feel the pressure of time. With the support of the center’s staff, she has enrolled in a PhD program at UCLA. Her research focuses on gibbons’ vocal communication. “Maybe it will open doors that will help me reach those goals that I want for the gibbons, not just for myself,” she says.
Gibbons live, on average, to age 40 but can live into their 50s and 60s, needing decades of care and protection.
“Our oldest one is 41. I want to have better enclosures for him, in the next couple of years, and for all of them,” Skollar says. “We are moving ahead and accomplishing a lot of things, but I feel like it happens too slow.”•
Louise Farr is based in Los Angeles, where she’s a contributing editor for the Writers Guild of America West magazine. She’s the author of the true-crime book The Sunset Murders.
