KHAO PHRA THAEO WILDLIFE SANCTUARY, Thailand — The white-handed gibbon, captured as an infant by poachers, was rescued from a grim life amusing inebriated visitors in tourist bars, then spent eight years in a cage at a rehabilitation center.

Now, this survivor of abuse and trauma lives in the jungle on Thailand’s Phuket island, where she was recently seen perched on a tree branch 50 feet above ground as her wild-born mate and their two offspring watched warily from nearby trees.

Hers is a rare success story.

Named Cop, after a police officer who aided in her rescue, she is part of a small colony of gibbons rescued, rehabilitated and released into Phuket’s largest remaining forest by the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project, a nonprofit group that rescues gibbons in Thailand.

“We now have 35 in the forest at Phuket, including those born in the wild,” said Thanaphat Payakkaporn, general secretary of the Wild Animal Rescue Foundation of Thailand, which runs the gibbon project. “Some have grandchildren now.”