The Gibbon Experience in Laos is a tourism-based conservation project. It is mainly known for its canopy set-ups featuring incredible tree houses and zip lines. Local challenges to conservation like poaching, logging and slash and burn farming, destroy primary forests and its inhabitants in Southeast Asia. To solve these problems, the Gibbon experience along with the local people, build tree houses and a network of zip lines through the canopy of the Bokeo Nature Reserve in Laos. Accommodation is provided in the treetops and local guides ‘fly’ you over the forest. The funds received are reinvested to protect the rainforest. Through national park patrols, reforestation schemes, trend-setting tourism, and sustainable agriculture the Gibbon Experience currently provides full time jobs to over 120 people.
- http://www.gibbonexperience.org/
- +856 84 21 20 21 / +856 30 57 45 866
- P.O. box 400, Ban Houayxay, Bokeo Province, Lao P.D.R.
The National Park Patrol team’s primary focus is on illegal logging, hunting, bomb fishing and land use. The Gibbon Experience project runs the patrol jointly with the Lao Government, and bears nearly all the related expenses: salaries, food, cars, bikes, petrol, uniforms, environmental awareness campaigns and special law enforcement operations. Furthermore, two reforestation schemes have been active since 2009. One commercial, on the farmers' land that surrounds the National Park so as to foster sensible logging practices with valuable, fast growing species, such as teak. One non-commercial, on the National Park's degraded parts, with diversified species to support canopy reconstitution. Each year, 100 000 young trees come out of the dedicated tree nursery.