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Our Trip to Costa Rica...

Uncategorized Sep 17, 2020

At Wildlifetek, we love using technology to better understand and conserve wildlife, so when we had the opportunity to visit the Las Pumas Rescue Centre & Sanctuary in Costa Rica we jumped at the chance. With COVID-19 shutting down many of our wildlife travel plans, it’s not been as easy for us to do the work we love. Likewise, it’s been a tough time for wildlife organisations who rely on funding from visitors to do their work that is so vital to wildlife conservation. Las Pumas is now using technology to help get around some of these issues by offering virtual tours of their centre, enabling those of us who are grounded to experience and better understand wildlife while raising vital funds for their conservation work.

 

Bruno - a puma. He was kidnapped from the den at one month old and sold as an illegal pet to be displayed as a tourist attraction. He arrived at Las Pumas in 2012 at six months old.

Our amazing tour guide, Virginia Pelayo, gave us a warm welcome to Central America via the Zoom app on her smartphone. As our team at Wildlifetek is spread across the globe, it was wonderful to be able to ‘get together’ for this ‘trip’ from the comfort of our homes in the UK, USA and Malaysia. Through our laptops and tablets back home, we were transported (with minimal carbon output) to meet some incredible wildlife species including: pumas, ocelots, spider monkeys, toucans and jaguars.

Guacamole - a rainbow beaked toucan. Came to the centre as a baby & cannot be released into the wild because he is too used to humans.

The wildlife species we saw are in need of help for a variety of reasons, but at the top of the list are habitat destruction and the demand for these animals as illegal pets. Virginia told us stories of how some of the animals here have come to the rescue centre after they had been kept illegally as pets. Some had been ‘rescued’ by well meaning humans who had found them ‘abandoned’ by their mothers, while others had been deliberately taken.

Max - an ocelot. He was found along without his mother by the roadside at around a month old and was rescued by a local family. They kept him until he was around 10 months old and then brought him to the centre.

My personal favourite animal we encountered on the tour was the grison (Galictis vittata). This feisty, intelligent creature is a mustelid (a member of the weasel family). I love how they move and also how tenacious they are! They remind me so much of the honey badger in the US and it seems that they have a similar aptitude for figuring out how things work pretty quickly. Bito (pictured below) is a particular character and it was awesome to meet him on the tour. If you’ve never seen one of these awesome creatures before, be sure to check them out.

This is Bito – a grison. He was brought to the centre as an orphan baby.

This ‘trip’ was a fantastic experience: not only did we have a lot of fun, but our entry fees also go towards the important conservation work that Las Pumas does.

If you’d like to learn more about Las Pumas, you can find out more via their Facebook Page and website. You could even experience your own private virtual tour and support their vital wildlife conservation work.

 

 

 

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