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Published: October 12th 2008
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Situated on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, Flor de la Amazonía Animal Rescue Centre is a volunteer based non-profit organization striving to help the native animals of South America and the indigenous communities of Ecuador.
The Flor de la Amazonía Animal Rescue Centre, locally known as "Wayra Urku", was created out of necessity for a rehabilitation centre for a wide diversity of Amazonian wildlife. These animals have sadly been victims of trafficking, destruction of their natural habitat or mistreatment, still too common today in Ecuador and South America in general.
The Flor de la Amazonía Animal Rescue Centre is responsible for rescuing these wild animals from captivity, commonly found tied up with ropes or chains or kept in tiny cages with no water or food. Once they arrive at our centre their rehabilitation process begins - the first step being providing them a quiet and clean resting space, appropriate food and water.
Every morning we would begin our day with a meeting, discussing the days general plan. Jana was put into the bird team, which consisted of looking after 7 cages. 1 Blue Macaw, 2 Red Macaws, 3 green parrots, 15 Parakeets and a toucan. Drew was
placed in a team which consisted of looking after several Capuchin monkies, 1 kawatee and 1 kinkaju. After that in our teams we would feed and clean the animals first thing every morning. In the afternoons we would continue building more enclosures for the animals as the rescue centre was growing fast. Several animals are now ready for release, however like everything there is always politics. The centre is waiting on permits to release the rehabilitated animals into a protected area where the animals can go on living a natural life.
While we were there we were able to watch the process of 2 woolly monkies, a kawatee, 3 tortises and an armadillo being rescued. Friends of ours that we were working with seen some of these animals in small cages at a tourist place not far from where we were. So on the way back from our weekend away we stopped at this place and took pictures of evidence for Gloudina (the girl who runs the rescue centre). We pretended that we were excited to see a monkey in a 2m square cage and a Kawatee with a tail or messed up. The worse thing was that the
man who had these animals named the monkey “Tear” (extremely disturbing). After 2 days the animals were able to be rescued and brought to our centre and it was great to see them in a better place where we know they will be treated and later released.
A little about the animals at the rescue centre:
Capuchin Monkies:
Ninja - the leader of the pack, the best fighter, hence his name
Big Fu*%er - 2nd in charge
Little Fu*%er - loved playing in the water and followed Drew around every morning copying his actions and holding the brush for him - Drews favourite.
Dracula - big teeth!
Grumpy - Had a face that looked grump all the time. Stole Jana’s lip balm out of her pocket and played with mud balls
Tina - Very aggressive monkey. Escaped one day and had us locked in the kitchen for 4 hrs while they tried to catch her again. Loves to dance!
Mischief - Really cheeky and liked to jump on the volunteers and play!
Sam - a circus monkey that hates other monkies but loves most people!
Squirrel Monkies - they had been released but still lived in the tree tops
Tina
One of the many capuchin monkies in rehabilitation around the rescue centre.
Songo Songo Monkey - Gorgeous female monkey. Her mother was shot by locals when she was 1 week old. She was raised by the hunters wife and was donated when the wife realised it was not right to bring up a monkey in a house.
Margae Cat - A jungle Cat
Peccaries - Wild Pigs
Kinkaju - A nocturnal animal that has brain damage
Kawatee - Looks like a racoon
Johnny the Woolly Monkey - Raised by a lady who use to shampoo him and put make -up on him, Was confiscated by the animal police and brought to the rescue centre to cure his skin diseases from the products.
2 Red Macaws, 1 Blue Macaw, 3 Green Parrots, 14 Parakeets and a Toucan.
Baby river Turtle and 3 Tortoises
3 baby birds that arrived recently. A tree was cut down and the babies were left in the nest without their mother.
A 2 week old baby Armadillo that unfortunately didn’t make it. We had to bury her a couple of days after she arrived.
2 baby Woolly Monkies and a new Kawatee that was rescued from a tourist attraction river rafting site.
Finally Ricky the
Drew
"We sell beer, coca cola and more" dog! Playful and caring and helped Jana get over her fear of dogs!
We had an amazing time working so closely with the animals from the Amazon Jungle. It was great to learn the different personalities of the animals and watch their behaviours over the weeks that we were there. It defiantly was a great learning experience about animals that prior to our arrival we had no idea about. We are already missing the animals, however we are not going to miss being woken up by the birds squawking at 6am in the morning!
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Jess
non-member comment
OMG Jana! The monkeys are so freakin cute!!!! You seem totally in your element here....