15 000 Kip Black crested gibbon

Laos issued a series of wildlife-themed silver coins in the early 2000s partly in response to international conservation pressure — the country's forests were under severe logging stress, and the northern and eastern gibbon populations had been fragmented to the point where field surveys struggled to locate breeding groups. The black crested gibbon (Nomascus concolor) was already categorized as critically endangered, with the Laotian subpopulation considered one of the last viable ones in existence.

These coins were struck for the collector market rather than domestic circulation — 15,000 kip was a nominal face value with no practical purchasing relationship to a silver 20g piece in Vientiane in 2004.