February 2011 newspetter

This month:

- Birth of a baby Capuchin monkey
- We have a vet, finally!
- 9th and 10th environmental education lessons
- Grand opening of the bonfire place
- Enlargement of Tayra’s cage

Birth of a baby capuchin monkey

The most important announcement this month at the Centre is the birth of a baby into the ¨potential release¨ Capuchin group.
Immediately one of the female monkeys became the mother’s nurse and helped care for the baby night and day.
The baby was born healthy on January 18th. We don’t know the sex of the baby yet because it spends the whole day on its mother´s back.

We have a vet, finally!

Finally the Centre has the vet that the animals deserve- she will stay at the Centre for 6 months. As was explained before, it is currently impossible to pay a vet to work at the Centre full time. We are very grateful for those who devote their time to this important cause. We are also always searching for more veterinarians, and appreciate donations of time as well as funding. We hope to one day make this a paid position. Thank you in advance!

9th and 10th environmental education lessons

The topics discussed in the past two lessons were “Trade of Plants and Animals” and “Extraction of Natural Resources”.

For the 9th lesson the schedule was:

1) Review of previous lesson
2) Review of simple concepts for the understanding of the systems: habitat; biodiversity; exploitation; trade; extinction
3) Explanation of animal and plant trafficking and the difference between trafficking and trade (with domestic animals)
4) Why are animals and plants trafficked? – Game with the uses of every species
5) Short play where some magical dwarves tell the story about the extinction of the animals in a forest.
6) Brainstormed children´s ideas onto a poster titled “No Illegal Trade in My Country”
7) Evaluation
8) Lunch

For the 10th lesson the schedule was:

1) Review of previous lesson
2) Explanation of the ¨circle of life¨
3) Game – The wheel: the game involved spinning the wheel, which on one side depicted examples of small scale natural resource extraction, and the other side depicting examples of large scale natural resource extraction. The idea that we wanted to emphasize was that though extraction is necessary, we can do it in an environmentally friendly way. We also proposed alternatives and solutions to improve the situation once the resources have been obtained.
4) Evaluation
5) Lunch

Grand Opening of the bonfire place

Last month we finished re-building the thatched area around the bonfire, so now the length is doubled. We’ve also built a place to store the logs and branches for the fire. We celebrated the opening with a barbecue and a relaxing night by the fire.

Enlargement of Tayra’s cage

Thanks to a donation of $200 from our friend Karin Ruhland, we were able to buy 2 rolls of fence to enlarge Tayra’s cage. The new and improved cage is 5 meters longer, 3-4 meters wider and 3 meters higher than the previous.

Speaking of Tayras, on February 6th we were brought a young individual who was caught by some dogs in the neighborhood. After a quick check by our veterinarian, we determined that the tayra miraculously sustained no injuries and was otherwise in good health. After this stressful event, the tayra was fed and spent the night at the Centre before returning to the wild the following morning.

This concludes our newsletter! Thanks very much to all, and see you next month!

xxxx - Wilfrido and Carolina - xxxx