It goes without saying that every animal’s story that lives in any sanctuary is a tragic one. The animals at Kids Saving The Rainforest (KSTR) are no different. They are only here because they were orphaned too young, injured, or taken from someone who thought they’d make a good pet.
The illegal pet trade is horrific and I won’t go into that here. It’s easy enough to find information about the impact this has on native species as a whole and individual animals in particular. Suffice it to say that every time I see a video on Facebook of some non-domesticated animal doing cute things as someone’s pet, I cringe. Asia and the Arab Gulf States are the prime destinations for animals poached from the wild. Yet, even in the U.S. the laws are not uniform across all states. While importing wildlife is prohibited nationwide, it’s still legal in many states to own different species of wild animals. That so many people still do, tells you the illegal trade is ongoing.
Today I met a French woman wrapping up her two weeks volunteering. I ate lunch across from a Chicago woman who moved to New Zealand 15 years ago. Beth actually had done volunteer work with the orangutans in Borneo in the past. A few different interns working in either the clinic or the nursery were coming and going. A health and travel writer from the Chicago area arrived in the afternoon to volunteer for a month. (She looked well, healthy.) There is a young man from Australia and a few Canadians here as well. Overseeing this motley crew is Mac, an actually employee and an American biologist who directs much of the daily sanctuary work.
This morning I toured the sanctuary portion of KSTR. Neither visitors nor volunteers are allowed in the nursery. They want to minimize the contact the orphans have with humans because their hope is ultimately to release them into the wild. Once the animals are old enough to leave the nursery they are moved to Rehab Bootcamp where they learn to feed themselves in a very large outdoor enclosure. Only if they are successful there, will they be released into the wild. The woman overseeing the nursery, or the nursery mom, has been here 6 years. She literally spends most of her time in the nursery.
The clinic was closed to us as well. They have a full time veterinary and a vet technician. They will treat any animal that is brought in injured except snakes and big cats. While they don’t house reptiles, they will treat them (except the snakes) and then either release them if possible or place them with another organization. They recently removed the eye of an injured iguana. Because the injury was not life threatening, they released it into their forest area once it had healed. Currently there is a juvenile vulture that is recovering from a broken leg.
The sanctuary itself is where those animals that are too disabled, too traumatized, or too habituated to humans to ever be released are housed. We visited these animals. These are the animals that the volunteers work with. The volunteers prepare the food for and feed the animals twice a day and clean cages. Recently KSTR has started a pilot research program to document behaviors. Some volunteers spend portions of their days watching and recording. A young German woman was sitting with clipboard in hand watching a sleeping sloth. Given that sloths sleep most of the time, her paper was blank.
One of the primary sources of injury for monkeys is electrocution. Monkeys use the electrical wires to cross areas where there is not enough tree coverage. When they reach out to steady themselves and touch another nearby wire, they can get burned, if not electrocuted. Sloths too get electric burns but many sloths are injured crossing roads. Again, where there is not enough tree cover for them to cross the road in the canopy, they will drop to the ground and walk. An interesting fact about sloths is that in an intact forest they only come down to the ground a couple of times a week to poop. They can lose up to a third of their body weight when they do. Obviously, it’s a pretty vulnerable time for them, making them easy prey for packs of dogs.
A cool thing that KSTR is doing is promoting the use of “animal bridges”. These are merely lengths of rope strung across areas where monkeys and sloths have a habit of using the electrical wires in the absence of a suitable canopy cover. They seem to be working and are starting to catch on in the area with some hotels and restaurants adopting them on their property. Hopefully hotel owners will figure out that it’s bad for business to have animals electrocuted while their patrons are dining.
All the enclosures at KSTR are big, airy and full of branches, palm fronds, platforms and anything else that provides stimulation for the animals. A few animals are alone but whenever possible they try to put same species together. That can be difficult with some of the monkeys who were taken from abusive environments and who have only ever known humans.
While touring we had to stay back away from the enclosures and not interact with the animals although many begged us to do so. The goal at KSTR is not to tame these animals any further or make pets of them, but instead to keep them safe in as natural a habitat as possible. It was heartbreaking to hear these animals’ stories but the ones here are the lucky ones who survived. KSTR gives value to their lives by having the animals in their care be the ambassadors for their species. It’s a very powerful place to visit.
