Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary

The Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary, also known as the Hollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary, is located in the Jorhat district of Assam and covers about 21 square kilometers. Established officially in 1997, it is an isolated protected area of evergreen and semi-evergreen forests surrounded by tea gardens and villages.

This sanctuary is unique as it contains India's only apes, the hoolock gibbons, along with the only nocturnal primate in Northeastern India, the Bengal slow loris. The forest canopy has three layers, dominated by the hollong tree in the upper canopy and the nahar tree in the middle. Besides gibbons, the sanctuary is home to other primates such as stump-tailed macaques, rhesus macaques, and capped langurs, as well as large mammals including elephants, tigers, leopards, and various smaller mammals.

It also harbors a rich diversity of bird species and reptiles. The sanctuary has faced fragmentation over time due to surrounding tea plantations and villages but remains crucial for biodiversity conservation and is the only sanctuary in India named after a primate due to its dense gibbon population. It lies about 19 to 25 kilometers from Jorhat town and offers trekking opportunities to explore its wildlife closely.