GIVING GIBBONS A BREAK MAN, INSTITUTE DEVOTED TO PRESERVING SONGFUL APES.Byline: Kathleen Sweeney Staff Writer Alan Mootnick was 9 when he first heard their song. The gibbons Famous people named Gibbons include:
``I fell in love with them,'' he said. For 10 cents a week, Mootnick carried out the neighbors' garbage and eventually created a zoo in his back yard with rabbits, pigeons and a dog. But Mootnick's dream was to help save the gibbons, especially because the species was on the verge On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning) is a play written by Eric Overmyer. It makes extensive use of esoteric language and pop culture references from the late nineteenth century to 1955. of extinction. That dream became a reality 25 years ago after he built and opened the International Center for Gibbon gibbon, small ape, genus Hyloblates, found in the forests of SE Asia. The gibbons, including the siamang, are known as the small, or lesser, apes; they are the most highly adapted of the apes to arboreal life. Studies nestled in a hillside outside Santa Clarita Santa Clarita, city (1990 pop. 110,642), Los Angeles co., S Calif., suburb 30 mi (48 km) NW of downtown Los Angeles, on the Santa Clara River; inc. 1987. Situated in the Santa Clara valley and nearby canyons, Santa Clarita includes the former towns of Canyon Country, . It's a safe haven 1. Designated area(s) to which noncombatants of the United States Government's responsibility and commercial vehicles and materiel may be evacuated during a domestic or other valid emergency. 2. for the apes to breed and play, and a place for Mootnick to study their behavior. He opened the center with one gibbon that had been a pet, he said. He now tends 34 apes, including two infants, one 2 weeks old and one 8 months old. The newest member of the gibbon tribe arrived Tuesday on an Air New Zealand Parameter not given Error... ''Template needs its first parameter as beg[in], mid[dle], or end. Parameter not given Error... flight from the Perth Zoo The Perth Zoo () is a zoo in South Perth, Western Australia. History The zoo opened in 1898 with two lions, a tiger, and six staff members. From the beginning until 1935 the director was Ernest Albert Le Souef. in western Australia Western Australia, state (1991 pop. 1,409,965), 975,920 sq mi (2,527,633 sq km), Australia, comprising the entire western part of the continent. It is bounded on the N, W, and S by the Indian Ocean. Perth is the capital. . Khusus, a 4-year-old Javan gibbon female, will spend the next 30 days in quarantine before being introduced to Ushko. Mootnick hopes their interaction is successful so they can mate. Khusus, which means ``special'' in Indonesian, doesn't yet realize her importance at the center, Mootnick said. She'll be part of a rare pair of Javan gibbons mating to help repopulate a species that only has 400 left in the wild. Most gibbons are running some risk of extinction, he said. Poachers are hunting the babies in China, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Malaysia and Indonesia, mostly to sell them as pets in Asia. Often, the mothers are killed and either left for dead, skinned or used for food. Mootnick houses six of the 11 species of gibbons, the rarest and most endangered. But the center costs about $70,000 a year, which doesn't include the mortgage at the facility, and relies on donations, money from student tours and volunteers. Air New Zealand has helped by transporting three gibbons from overseas to live at the center. His dream is to someday release the apes back into the wild, so he limits human contact with them. He feeds them eight times a day and makes notes about their behavior. ``It's very important to keep as many alive as possible,'' Mootnick said. ``The gibbon is just as rare as the panda or the mountain gorilla. The public is unaware and they need our help.'' CAPTION(S): 2 photos Photo: (1 -- color in Verb 1. color in - add color to; "The child colored the drawings"; "Fall colored the trees"; "colorize black and white film" color, colorise, colorize, colour in, colourise, colourize, colour SAC edition only) Alan Mootnick shelters 34 gibbons at his International Center for Gibbon Studies. (2 -- color -- ran in SAC edition only) Reg, a baby Javan gibbon, nestles in the furry arms of his mother, Chloe, at the International Center for Gibbon Studies. Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer |
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