World Wildlife Day

Ontario’s African Lion Safari was just named the worst Zoo in North America. And we are furious. Not because they don’t deserve honour- they truly are the scourge of Cambridge Ontario. We are furious because this exploitative and oppressive ‘zoo’ still exists.

In Defense of Animals put out this media release: 10 Worse Zoos for Elephants and at the very top is a person standing on the neck of an elephant who is being forced to perform at African Wild Safari. We encourage everyone to read their media release because it’s really important to understand how disgusting and terrible these places are for animals. In Defense of Animals is an international animal protection organization with a 30-year history of fighting for animals, people and the environment through education, campaigns and hands-on rescue facilities in India, Africa, and rural Mississippi. There is nothing that we can add to this conversation that they have not said in the media release, so please do read it and send a donation for their hard work.

But since you are already here… In the meantime let us address just the picture we see.

This animal is a WILD animal. It's not a domestic animal that is happy and gets joy or enrichment from doing tricks and bonding with it's human friend.

It's a WILD animal who's brain, from the moment they are born, sees humans as predators, threats that cause them stress.

Domesticating an animal takes many many many generational changes in the genetics of that animal. See: dogs from wild dogs.

When we rip WILD animals from their homes. When we force them 'behave' and perform for us through violence. When we breed them for even more exploitation. When we support the people who do all of this, or some of this, we support oppression. *We are oppressors.*

What does this animal teach us about biology, about conservation, about empathy, about elephants? How can anyone say this is an educational show, an educational park? It's oppression, it's exploitation, it's violence and it does not serve anyone to have it still open.

It's World Wildlife Day and we are embarrassed that this is happening in Ontario.

#wildlifenotentertainers #worldwildlifeday

All About Elephants!

Elephants - the largest land mammal on Earth and incredibly intelligent creatures. Elephants are highly social animals, living in matriarchal groups, with the matriarch (usually the oldest female) making the decisions for the herd. Male elephants leave the family group after adolescence to join bachelor herds or live on their own. Elephants are socially complex, seeming to understand how other elephants are feeling, demonstrating empathy, assisting each other and even mourning their dead.
 

African elephants and Asian elephants may live on different continents, but they are very similar in behaviour and appearance. African elephants tend to be larger, have bigger ears, a rounder head and a concave back compared to their Asian cousins. African elephants can live to be 70 years and Asian elephants can live up to 50 years in the wild.

Seeing an elephant for the first time, you will instantly understand why they are respected and revered - and at times feared. Elephants are massive, and they are incredibly strong. Adult males weigh up to six tonnes, while male Asian elephants can weigh up to five tonnes. These giants are vegetarians, eating a wide range of plant material, including grass, leaves, woody parts of trees and shrubs, roots, flowers and fruits when available. An adult needs to eat up to 150 kg (330 lbs) of food a day – that’s 50 tonnes a year!

Trunks and Tusks

Their most notable feature, their trunk, is an extension of the upper lip and nose, and is used for breathing, smelling, touching, grasping and producing sound. Baby elephants will even suck on their trunk to soothe themselves, like children will suck their thumb. The trunk is very muscular and a male elephant can use their trunk to lift a load of more than 250 kg. That's over 550 lbs! Their distinctive tusks are actually long upper incisor teeth, and are used as a tool to dig for food or water and to strip bark from trees. Tusks are also used as a weapon during fights with rivals, and by males to court females who appreciate larger tusks in their partners. Both male and female African elephants have tusks, while only some male Asian elephants have them. Female Asian elephants have shorter tusks called tushes.

Threats to Elephants

Ivory, which refers to the tusks, has been long treasured by humans, and is used to make luxury goods like jewellery and carvings, piano keys and billiard balls. Ivory is one of the main threats to the survival of the elephant species, as elephants are still hunted for their ivory tusks despite international bans and regulations. Asian elephants also face threats from tourist attractions where people pay to ride on their backs or to be entertained by performances. The hidden truth is that to make elephants submit to elephant rides and other human interactions, they are taken from their mothers when babies and forced through a horrific training process that essentially breaks their spirit. And the ongoing treatment of captive elephants is often appalling. As if this wasn't enough, elephants are also losing their habitats through the destruction of forests and the development of land. Elephants need large spaces in which to live and this loss has threatened their survival and pushed them into more conflict situations with humans.

We have the power

We have the power to help protect elephants. As tourists, as consumers and as animal lovers we can ensure we are not contributing to these problems and that we are actively supporting change. When traveling, or at home, do not buy or sell products that contain ivory. Do not support attractions that offer elephant rides or shows, and instead look for organizations that commit to offering elephant experiences with a high standard of elephant welfare and conservation, with responsible viewing of elephants in wild or semi-wild habitats. 

Animal Experience International has taken a stand by pledging not to sell or promote cruel elephant activities, and to help to avert future crises by making this the last generation of captive elephants used for entertainment. AEI volunteers help at an Elephant Sanctuary in Thailand that provides refuge for rescued elephants, allows the elephants opportunities for normal socialization and upholds a high standard of care. You too can join the team and help provide care for these amazing creatures!

Click here to learn how to help elephants!

Wildlife Veterinary Care

Wildlife rehabilitation offers sick, injured, orphaned and rescued wildlife a second chance. This work would not be possible without dedicated wildlife carers, biologists, park rangers, veterinary professionals and volunteers. Animal Experience International supports wildlife centres around the world, in Guatemala, Malawi, Thailand and Australia. I personally have had the honour to work as a wildlife veterinarian for more than 20 years. Not a day goes by that I'm not surprised or amazed by my wild patients. Working with wildlife presents many challenges that are not faced by vets treating domestic animals like dogs, cats and horses.

We don’t know their history.

Our wild patients often come to us with no background information. The animal may have been found lying on a road, been confiscated from a smuggler, or seen not using a leg. But unlike domestic animals, there is no person to share the animal’s history, a tool vets rely on to deduce what is wrong. Wildlife vets must be detectives, a task made even more difficult by the stoic nature of wildlife. In the wild a weak animal is more likely to become another animal’s dinner – wildlife has an amazing ability to hide their illness or injuries, even from veterinarians.

Survival is essential.

Add to that, our wild patients have to be well enough to survive in the wild once released. We cannot ask a patient to return for regular follow-up exams, or to leave with pain medication that they can take indefinitely. The goal of wildlife rehabilitation is to return healthy animals back to the wild. Wild animals must be able to swim, climb, fly, hunt, evade prey, reproduce, interact appropriately, and flourish in the wild. This holds us vets to an exceedingly high standard!

Our care is very stressful.

Wildlife find captivity to be extremely stressful – to a wild animal, humans are seen as predators. This means we must work very hard to keep our patients as comfortable as possible and to minimize stress. Unlike with domestic animals, wildlife is not soothed by touch or reassuring talk. Quite the opposite! Minimizing stress means being quiet around wildlife, staying away from enclosures, and keeping the number of times we examine, treat, weigh, or otherwise disturb our patients to a minimum. Wildlife centres work hard to design enclosures that keep animals safe and comfortable, and to provide enrichment to keep animals occupied while in care. Animals that are less stressed heal and recover more quickly, tend not to further injury themselves and can be released back to the wild sooner.

I love the challenges that come with working with wildlife – the constant problem solving, and creativity required to treat my patients successfully. But for all of us involved in wildlife rehabilitation and rescue, the most satisfying part is when our work in done, and the animal is given a second chance to live its life, free in the wild.
 

~ Dr. Heather Reid is a Wildlife Veterinarian and the Co-founder of AEI ~

Turtley Awesome Sea Turtle Facts.

The first time I saw a sea turtle was when I was in Costa Rica, participating in AEI’s sea turtle nesting conservation program. It was late at night and we were helping to patrol the beach, on the lookout for female turtles coming out of the ocean to lay their eggs. The turtle was a Leatherback - a giant, silent, magnificent presence in the moonlight. She was breathtaking. And the experience was made even more amazing by knowing we were ensuring her eggs would be kept safe, and that her offspring could return to the ocean one day, to continue a cycle that has been taking place for over 100 million years.

Sea turtles are one of the most loved marine creatures, but also one of the most secretive. For the most part, what sea turtles do and where they spend their time has remained a mystery. There are seven species of sea turtles in our oceans, and while females periodically come on shore to lay their eggs, most of their lives are spent in the water. We do know that most species migrate thousands of kilometers in their lifetimes as they move between their feeding and breeding grounds and are found in every ocean around the world, except the Arctic and Antarctic. One Leatherback turtle found on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica had been previously tagged in Newfoundland, Canada!

We need to know more about them

Tagging and tracking sea turtles has been key in allowing researchers to gain insight into their lives, and provides important information for sea turtle protection and conservation. AEI’s sea turtle conservation program in Costa Rica offers a glimpse into the lives of sea turtles when they are not at their nesting sites. Researchers study turtles swimming freely in the Golfo Dulce, identifying, tagging and monitoring these sea turtles to better understand their behaviour. This information is used in the global turtle conservation effort to help turtles around the world. 

Sea turtle facts 

Sea turtles species vary greatly in size. Olive ridleys are the smallest sea turtles (weighing up to 50 kg or 110 pounds). Leatherbacks are the largest sea turtle species and can weigh up to 680 kg (1,500 pounds) and measure 183 cm (6 feet). We know that sea turtles can live a very long time, but their exact age is difficult to document. Their natural lifespan is estimated to be between 50 and 100 years. It takes 20 - 30 years for a sea turtle to reach sexual maturity, and when ready, female turtles return to the very same beach where they were hatched to lay their own eggs. Some females have been found to nest every year until the age of 80!

How many sea turtles are there? 

This is a difficult question to answer, as juvenile and male sea turtles never come ashore. Population numbers are usually estimated by the number of adult females that nest each year. This is not an easy feat, as some females nest every 2 - 3 years, and others may nest more than once in a season. Scientists look at the changing numbers of nesting females from year to year to determine population trends. 

Making a difference

We do know that six of the seven species of sea turtles are listed as threatened, endangered or critically endangered. Sea turtles face multiple threats caused by humans, such as bycatch in commercial fishing gear, illegal trade, consumption, and climate change. There is still much work to do to decrease these threats and many ways for you to help.  AEI’s partner in Australia provides assistance to adult sea turtles that have been injured or impacted by boats, nets, ocean pollution and severe weather events. 

Together we are making a difference. We are starting to hear positive news, with many conservation programs reporting an increase in the numbers of nesting female sea turtles now being counted on the beaches. By supporting these efforts, we can continue to see the numbers of these ancient and mysterious sea creatures rise and ensure they have a place in the oceans for millions of more years to come.

Remember that AEI has a Relief Fund for our placement partners. If you want to donate to sea turtles you can send us the donation through paypal and we will send it over to them- just make sure you add the animal you want the donation to go to. That way you don’t pay any bank fees or anything like that! 100% of the money that you send us to send to sea turtle conservation will go to sea turtles! Donate Here!

Poachers are just a symptom of the toxic problem.

So many of our programs have hired on ex-poachers as conservationists. Typically poachers don't hate animals, they just love their families more. The illegal pet trade, palm oil plantations, illegal bush meat trade and urban development all lead to marginalised people turning to poaching to feed themselves, their families and sometimes their addictions. Poachers are just a symptom of a much bigger problem that we must address. We can address it by supporting locally lead conservation and animal welfare programs who hire people in their local communities and provide meaningful work. Care2 just highlighted an amazing conservation program that hired an ex poacher to help hornbills.

Next time you think about poaching and how horrific it is, continue thinking that BUT think about why it exists. It exists because of poverty so the best way to stop poaching at it’s source? Invest in the community, invest in people.

"Why is that monkey in a cage?"

I was recently talking to someone about our work at Animal Experience International, when she stopped me to ask why the photo I was showing her was of a spider monkey in a cage.

Did AEI support caging wild animals?

This was an important question, and a topic I am also passionate about as a wildlife veterinarian. I do not want to see wildlife kept in captivity if they can be living their lives free in the wild. The spider monkey in the photo was actually being housed at a wildlife rescue centre in Guatemala. This is an amazing organization that works tirelessly to rescue wild animals that have been captured as part of the illegal wildlife trade. When animals are confiscated from smugglers or from people using them to entertain tourists, they need somewhere to recover from their terrible ordeal. Some require medical attention. Others need supportive care. And orphaned babies need to be raised until they are old enough to care for themselves. While at the rescue centre, the animals are housed in enclosures that keep them safe, while protecting the humans that care for them.

So yes, they are in cages - but only temporarily. The goal is always to release them back to the wild. Staff and volunteers work hard to make the animals’ experience at the rescue centre as comfortable as possible. The wildlife are provided with environmental enrichment, places to hide and an enclosure set up that allows them to carry out their natural behaviours. The animals are moved to larger and larger enclosures as they begin to heal, and contact with people becomes less and less. For this spider monkey, he will eventually be housed with other spider monkeys in a large enclosure deep in the forest of the rescue centre and will see people as little as possible to minimize his exposure to humans. One day these spider monkeys will all be released to live their lives free in the jungle.

Gibbon Island in Thailand

AEI also supports several wildlife sanctuaries that provide a safe home for animals that cannot survive in the wild, and therefore cannot be released. Our elephant and wildlife sanctuary in Thailand is an excellent example of an organization working to provide a dignified and comfortable home for rescued, non-releasable animals. Their enclosures help to protect the animals, and are as large and natural as possible to ensure the animals are comfortable. Take for example their gibbons that cannot be released for one reason or another. These amazing primates are given an island to live on, separate from the main centre and are even fed remotely using a pulley system so that they are very rarely in contact with people. They are allowed to live as naturally as possible without human interference.

It is a sad reality that wild animals need to be kept in captivity at times in order to help or protect them. AEI supports organizations that house wildlife on a temporary basis, as part of a rescue and rehabilitation program. If providing long-term sanctuary we ensure that the best possible care is being offered the animals and that their lives are enriched and natural behaviours are encouraged. This is something that is very important to us - because wild animals deserve to be kept wild.

Want to volunteer with us in Guatemala or Thailand? Check out our program pages to volunteer anytime during the year (animals need help all year round and so we send volunteers all year round). Want to volunteer in Guatemala WITH us? Why not sign up for Expedition Guatemala? Take part in the rehabilitation of wildlife with your own two hands and understand the amazing work that is being done, first hand. 10 days volunteering with wildlife in February, sign up today!

Confronting the Aftermath of Animal Trafficking in Costa Rica.

When you google ocelot, this is what comes up:

Can you keep an ocelot as a pet?

Is it legal to have an ocelot as a pet?

Are ocelots dangerous pets?

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Animal trafficking is alive and well in the Americas. It's disturbing how these animals are captured. It's harrowing to see how they are illegally trafficked from the country. It's heartbreaking to see what their lives become when they are stolen from the wild and live as unhappy pets in small enclosures. 

This is an animal sanctuary we recently visited in Costa Rica. While sanctuaries are not perfect (only the wild is), it did a pretty damn good job explaining to people why these animals couldn't be realised back into their forest homes. Spoiler alert: humans. When these animals are trafficked sometimes their teeth are ripped out without anaesthetic, sometimes they are declawed without anaesthetic, sometimes they are just taken so young they never had a chance to learn how to be wild. They can't hunt, socialise, den or even really cat. 

Humanities obsession with owning things and our entitlement over the natural world has spelled often a life of torture and psychosis for the animals who survive animal trafficking. 

If you love animals, keep them in the wild. Ocelots are not for you, no matter how cute you think they are. 

While this enclosure is pretty good habitat for this cat, it pales in comparison to the life she would have if she was in the wild.