Hoollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary

About Hoollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary

Hoollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary, about 19 km from Jorhat town in upper Assam, is the only protected area in India where the western hoolock gibbon and the Bengal slow loris can both be reliably spotted. Covering roughly 21 sq km, the sanctuary was declared in 1997, building on forest that had already been reserved decades earlier; it was previously known simply as Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary before being renamed to reflect its signature species. The western hoolock gibbon is India's only ape species, and Hoollongapar holds one of the country's most accessible viewing populations, moving through the tall evergreen canopy in family groups and announcing themselves with loud, distinctive morning calls that carry across the forest. Sharing the same canopy is the nocturnal, slow-moving Bengal slow loris, a species far harder to see on a daytime visit but present in meaningful numbers within the sanctuary's core. Beyond the two headline primates, Hoollongapar supports stump-tailed macaque, eastern Assamese macaque, and capped langur, giving it one of the densest primate assemblages of any protected area in Northeast India. Larger mammals including tigers, jungle cats, Indian elephants, and wild boar also use the sanctuary, alongside a range of squirrel and civet species. The forest itself is a distinctive, tightly layered evergreen habitat: Hollong trees dominate the upper canopy, Nahar the middle layer, with evergreen shrubs and herbs forming the understorey. Because the sanctuary is a relatively small, isolated forest patch surrounded by tea estates and agricultural land, it is also an important case study in fragmented-habitat primate conservation, where the long-term survival of the gibbon population depends on maintaining canopy connectivity within a shrinking forest island.