Alan Mootnick once said he felt a certain kinship with gibbons, a small, acrobatic and endangered member of the ape family. Like them, he said, ''I was lean, agile and comical.''

He acted on those feelings by making a Southern California home for the largest gathering of gibbons in the Western Hemisphere; going on ecological missions to their native Asian forests to help save them from extinction; and writing articles for academic journals despite having no formal education in biology.

''He was the gibbon champion of the world right now, hands down,'' Rick Barongi, director of the Houston Zoo and a primate expert, said in an interview.

Mr. Mootnick died of complications of heart surgery on Nov. 4 at a Los Angeles hospital, the Gibbon Conservation Center, in Santa Clarita, Calif., announced. He was 60.

The center, which Mr. Mootnick started in 1976, was his vehicle to help the gibbon species, of which there are more than 15 types. They average 30 pounds as adults, have brains bigger than those of monkeys and are the only apes to walk on two feet. One of the few monogamous primates, they mate for life, rear nuclear families and sing birdlike duets with their partners. They also swing through trees at speeds of up to 35 miles per hour, often 200 feet above the ground.

The gibbon is considered the most endangered of apes. The center estimates that its natural habitat, the tropical and subtropical rain forests of East, South and Southeast Asia, is being destroyed at a rate of 32 acres per minute.

The Gibbon Conservation Center, situated on 10 partly shady acres in mountainous country north of Los Angeles, houses gibbons in cagelike enclosures. Offspring live with their parents in what the center calls ''species-typical family units'' until they reach adulthood. They then co-habit with mates.

The center says its mission is to establish gene pools in case attempts to preserve the species in the wild fail, and to support the gibbons' conservation in their natural habitat.

Mr. Mootnick fell in love with gibbons when, about age 7, he heard them vocalize at a zoo. He was fascinated by many other kinds of animals as well, and by the time he was 9 he had decided he wanted to start his own zoo. He said his inspiration was Tarzan. He started with a pigeon and a rabbit, paying for their food by carrying out the neighbors' garbage. He gradually added bigger animals, including a llama.

Mr. Mootnick acquired his first gibbon -- Spanky, someone's former pet -- in 1976. Two years later he got his second, on loan from a Rhode Island zoo, for use as a breeding partner. Using proceeds from his house-painting and repair business, he bought the Santa Clarita site in 1980.

Eventually he increased his gibbon population to 44, mainly by trading gibbons with other zoos for breeding and through births by his own apes. A nonprofit enterprise, the center is financed by individual donations and foundations. Volunteers supply the labor.

Mr. Mootnick made the center a serious scientific workplace by publishing dozens of research papers. In The American Journal of Primatology, he recently wrote about the crested gibbon of China and the silvery gibbon of Java, both exceedingly rare. He advised zoos, veterinarians and government agencies.

He permitted students and others to tour the center, always keeping them at a distance from those animals he hoped to send back to the wild. Visitors are required to have the bottom of their shoes disinfected before entering the site.

The center will continue to operate, though its representatives say a planned expansion now seems unlikely.

Alan Richard Mootnick was born on Jan. 23, 1951, and grew up in Encino, Calif. His father, an accountant, and his mother, who helped her husband, died when Alan was a teenager. A sister, Ronnie Weinberger, survives him.

After graduating from high school, Mr. Mootnick took a two-year dental technician course at Los Angeles City College before deciding he would hate working cooped up indoors. He started painting houses. Like his gibbons, he lived at the conservation center, in its machine shop, and like them, he generally ate standing up, or walking.


PHOTO: Alan Mootnick at the Gibbon Conservation Center in 2008. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CARLOS CHAVEZ/LOS ANGELES TIMES)