The role of culture in gibbon conservation
Earlier in October, our Scientific Director Dr Susan Cheyne co-led a session at the IUCN World Conservation Congress (WCC) 2025 in Abu Dhabi. Through an exciting blend of science, story and song, the event explored how local culture can inspire conservation action to protect gibbons throughout their range.
Despite being one of the most endangered groups of primates (all but one of the 20 gibbon species are classed as Endangered or Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List), gibbons receive only a fraction of the funding and attention given to their great ape cousins. Borneo is home to one fifth of the world’s gibbon species, but all are threatened by habitat loss resulting from forest fires, overexploitation, conversion to agriculture and human expansion.
The Borneo Nature Foundation (BNF) is responsible for one of the longest continuous studies on wild gibbons, established by Dr Cheyne in 2005. With research and conservation projects across three distinct landscapes, we work closely with local people, many of whom belong to Borneo’s Indigenous Dayak communities. At the WCC, Dr Cheyne performed a dramatic retelling of an old Dayak story of how gibbons got their song, illuminating cultural attitudes towards Asia’s singing, swinging apes, and how these can become fuel for new conservation initiatives.
Dr Cheyne explains the importance of preserving culture, as well as biodiversity: “our ancestral and cultural links to wildlife are in danger of being lost. Oral traditions don’t often receive the same recognition as scientific facts. Yet these stores are embedded with people. To lose these stories is to lose a huge local ecological knowledge base and will sever a centuries old link between people and nature.”
Since only a select few were lucky enough to attend the WCC 2025 in person, we’re also sharing the gibbon legend recounted by Dr Cheyne here in full. Originally transcribed for the IUCN Species Survival Commission Section on Small Apes — of which Dr Cheyne is also the Vice-Chair — read on to discover the mythic origins of Borneo’s gibbons…
How gibbons got their song
A long time ago there was a beautiful young woman who lived in a village. She was happy and would enjoy going into the forest to collect fruits. A much older man came to her and made her his wife. At first, he was kind and thoughtful, but after some time he showed his anger and he became mean. The young woman would seek solace in her trips into the forest.
One day the young woman met a hunter from another village, and they came to talk to each other and share their stories. And the woman returned to her husband a little happier. The next day she spent longer in the forest so she could seek out the handsome hunter.
As the weeks went by, the woman and the hunter would spend longer and longer together in the forest. But the husband because suspicious and he gathered his cronies and, the next morning, they followed the young woman. Sure enough, she met the hunter, and the husband and his friends set upon the young couple and chased them. In the confusion the couple became separated. They ran and ran, calling desperately for each other. As the husband and his mod close in, the Great Forest Spirit took pity on the couple and lifted them up into the trees. They were given long arms so they could swing between the trees, and the Great Forest Spirit gave them each a wonderful voice. So, the couple became gibbons, and with their new songs, they would always be able to find each other every morning.
