Gibbon Trafficking Crisis: Record Seizures Reveal Alarming Surge in Illegal Trade Across Asia

The Save the Gibbons Alliance, a coalition of conservationists and media experts, has documented at least one gibbon-smuggling incident per month for over a year. These cases involve multiple gibbon babies or juveniles, often seized at airports in Southeast Asia or India.

Heartbreaking images frequently accompany local media reports of these seizures, showing distressed or dead gibbon infants stuffed into luggage.

"The level of complexity and organization that needs to be involved in this is just huge," says Dr. Susan Cheyne, senior lecturer in primate conservation at Oxford Brookes University and a member of the Save the Gibbons Alliance.

Some months, the number of seizure incidents has risen to three or four. Confiscations have occurred during departures from Kuala Lumpur International Airport (Malaysia) or Suvarnabhumi Airport (Bangkok, Thailand), as well as upon arrivals at various Indian airports.

Kanitha Krishnasamy, Southeast Asia director for TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring NGO, notes that this frequency is unprecedented. "It’s not something we’ve seen commonly in the past," she says.

Record-Breaking Gibbon Seizures in 2025

A recent TRAFFIC report highlights the scale of gibbon trafficking from 2016 to 2025. In 2025 alone, 93 trafficked gibbons were confiscated across South and Southeast Asia—the highest number in the past decade. This figure includes gibbons kept as pets and those smuggled internationally by air, sea, and land.

This 2025 total accounts for a third of all gibbons seized in the previous nine years (2016–2024).

Key Hotspots and Trafficking Routes

Over the past decade, Indonesia has reported the highest number of gibbon-confiscation incidents, driven by robust domestic trade and increased law enforcement scrutiny. However, India and Malaysia have recently become central to international gibbon-smuggling attempts.

Between 2016 and 2025, 33 gibbon-smuggling incidents were recorded, most involving multiple animals. Of these:

• India was involved in 26 attempts as a destination or possible transit country.
• Malaysia was involved in 20 incidents as a source or transit point for gibbons trafficked from Indonesia and other Southeast Asian range countries.

"In the past, we’ve seen countless species from India being trafficked into the Southeast Asian market. Now, we seem to be seeing something different—gibbons and other mammals sourced from Southeast Asia headed to the Indian market," says Krishnasamy.

About Gibbons: The 'Singing Apes' of Asia

Gibbons are small, agile apes found in 11 Asian countries, from northeast India to the western islands of Indonesia. They are renowned for their loud, melodious calls, known as "songs," which echo through forest canopies.

Of the 20 recognized gibbon species, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists five as critically endangered and nine as endangered.