Esperanza Verde update / 22.04.16 – 20.05.16

After a calm week with less and less animals in the cages, due to a lot of releases, we received a couple of new ones to bring more variety back into our daily routine. The Ministry confiscated a few animals and phoned us. As they were not able to come here Olivia travelled to Pucallpa to have a look. She came back with a bit more than we thought but this is not surprising, as the animal trade in this region is such a problem, and there is no other rescue center to turn to.

Monkeys

Chiquita (Baby female woolly monkey), Khali & Cinty (Baby male and female capuchin monkeys)

The Babies did recover since the last update. All three of them are together again and playing outside as much as possible. They are also slowly gaining weight again. We still try to distance ourselves more from the monkeys, but it proves to be hard – especially for the long term volunteers. That in mind, it is fair to say, that they do very well outside and are eating and drinking good.

Willow, Kamari & Nakoya (Woolly monkeys)

As always an honorable mention. The “old” woollies are still around of course, but with all the new stuff happening, they sometimes get lost in the updates. Kamari and especially Willow start to show dominant behavior. They are protective around the babies and their canines are getting bigger every day. They break more branches while playing to show off their strength, too. We need to be really strict with the no-touching policy now, to keep them in a healthy distance towards us humans. That is better for them and for us as well. Nakoya on the other hand is only around the volunteers when there is food involved. We found out that she had parasites, so we had to deworm her. Now she finally seems to grow in weight.

Sira (female night-monkey)

As a result of the arrival of several new animals we had to occupy the cage, which we´ve been using for the night-monkey, for another animal. So we changed strategies and put Sira together with the other baby monkeys for some hours and the end of every day. Although she´s the smallest, her energy seems to last forever. Perfect for a play fight with the others and the more adult monkeys.

Lupa (Baby female woolly monkey)

Lupa is one of the new arrivals from this month. She is a young woolly, a bit older than Chiquita. She arrived in good condition and is not used to a lot of handling by humans. But the curiosity is strong in this little monkey, whenever we feed her, she closes up to us to see what we are doing. After a bit more than a week (having had a medical check-up), we transferred her to the baby monkey cage. All of them get along well, but for the moment only Chiquita, Cintyh and Kali go outside during the day.

Other Mammals

Kimsa (Coati)

One of the recent released coatis showed up with an infected eye. Having always had one bad eye, we didn’t expect much from the treatment at first, but it showed that under the infection Kimsa still has a healthy eye. One of the volunteers has a veterinarian education and put it upon herself to treat the coati until the eye gets better. Naturally we had to put her in an enclosure for the time, the clinic is in full use! She looks now much better and was released just recently, directly roaming the forest floor for insects and worms.

Takari, (male paca), and Capac ( male pacarana)

Both are new arrivals and both are rodents. They are nocturnal animals and therefore not active during daytime. Both are in very good health, they were very well taken cared for where they came from. This is something we rarely experience with new arrivals.

Suyai (about a month old baby three toed sloth, female)

The most notable arrival is probably the baby sloth Suyai. A three toed sloth, unlike Elmo (two toed sloth). Everybody went crazy over this cute furry little friend. One of the volunteers nearly fainted even! Three toed sloths are extremely hard to raise, though. Apparently most of the young sloths raised by humans, die within the first 3 months. That´s why only Olivia and Douwe almost all the time take care of it. They take it upon themselves to feed it milk and leaves, so it gets the highest chance of survival. Unfortunately it was not to be. After 14 days with us, he had diarrhea, and within 2 days he died. We knew it would be hard, or even not possible, but without hope you can’t keep going. Therefore as well the name Suyai, which means hope. We are very sad it did work out, as it really seemed promising. It all went very quick….

Zambo (young male tayra)

Zambo was a case to worry a bit. He arrived with one blind eye, and another seemingly infected possible also blind eye. Also the smell of the fur indicated, that he has been troubled by parasites or illness. So he got a cage in the clinic, where we treated his better eye and took feces samples. As expected we found a lot of parasites and started to deworm him. Sadly the eye seemed to be untreatable, which makes him a blind animal. But he is gaining weight since the arrival and he also started to climb without eyesight to the top of his cage, after effective training by volunteers. What a brave animal! In the future we might be able to walk with him on a leash outside, just like Pepe, another Tayra, which several might remember from the early beginings of Esperanza Verde.

Milo & Chula (male and female agouti)

Another pair of rodents. Milo was brought to us by locals from nearby town and is still very young and also accustomed to humans. For a normally very shy and nervous animal, that is a bit extraordinary. He had his cage outside first besides the Volo House. Due to his small size, he could always escape to the front cage. So we decided to put him together with Chula in the clinic. Chula came with the other animals brought by Olivia from the Ministry and is – unlike Milo – extremely shy and nervous. Fortunately they get along well and even share a trunk together.

Birds

Parakeets

The Parakeet releasing is on halt, as we are now left with the last group of parakeets, of about 120, which all still have to grow back their feathers for a good flight. We still see several parakeets flying around every day. We have to be realistic though as we know not all of them might have survived, but we of course hope most of them made their way back to the wild again.

Pauki (Oropendola)

Pauki is back, ladies and gentlemen! After a mysterious absence of over two weeks, the lovely bird with his beautiful cry appeared again in Esperanza Verde. He seems to do fine on his own, but we love to have him around of course.

Cobalt winged parakeets & Festive amazon parrots

Alongside with all the rodents and woolly monkey, tayra and sloth, four birds arrived as well. All of them seem to have had experience with humans and are not too wild anymore. The festive are really nice looking parrots, but are not in very good condition at the moment. They share a cage with two vicious but very happy parakeets, that take every chance to pick your fingers while you´re cleaning the cage. They don’t just defend themselves when you come to close, they go for the attack. But then again, they can also make a nice whistle. Very funny birds.

Shakalaka, (speckled chachalaca)

Also together with all the animals Olivia brought from Pucallpa, was this beautiful speckled chachalaca. Very tame and always curious when you come up to feed him. We hope he will have a future here in Esperanza Verde outside, like Pauki, roaming around and visiting us frequently.

Supay (Shiny cow bird)

Some very sad news for the last part of this section. We have to announce the departure of a chirpy young bird. Supay fell victim to a boa in the aviary. It happened after work time, probably during the night. Nobody expected such thing to happen and his death is a tragedy, especially for long term volunteers. He was always super active, sitting on the volunteers, attacking them or just singing in the morning while everybody is cutting food in the bodega. Rest in peace Supay.

Reptiles

Next to the mammals Olivia brought were two yellow footed tortoises and 9 yellow spotted riverturtles of different sizes. The two tortoise are in the clinic for anti-fungal treatment and the turtles are in the enclosure surrounding the old office (the MOMO-cage) for a three-month period as quarantaine.

A woman from Bello Horizonte handed another, very small yellow spotted river turtle to Kayla It is only three legged but seems to do fine in a small pond in the clinic.

Construction

working on the cabin bathroom

Cabin

As we are still waiting for the material from Lima for the new spider-monkey cage, we started with a new project: the cabin. It is basically old office being rebuilt. We will built an extra toilet and shower attached to it and remodel the room, so people can sleep there in peace (which can be important for head volunteers). At the moment the walls for the sanitary installation are almost done, but the mosquito mash in the room still needs redoing.

Volunteers

At the moment of writing the group of volunteers consist of 12 people. It is a very motivated group of people, be it for the animals or in construction. With the clinic done now and a lot of new, young animals people we sometimes have to work overtime, but everybody enjoys it to the end. Soon there will be a shift though and a good part of the group will leave. But as always we await more motivated people with new energy and enthusiasm.

Thanks and greetings from the jungle!