Saving Sloths in Costa Rica

“How hard can it be to track a sloth?” This was the question that I was teased with several times prior to my recent trip to Costa Rica.  My honest answer was “I don’t know, probably not that hard.” Guess what? Trying to find an animal designed to camouflage itself 50 feet off the ground in dense canopy is pretty darn hard. Surveying a population of brown-throated three-toed (Bradypus variegatus) and Hoffman’s two-toed (Choloepus hoffmanni) sloths is just one of the ways that I (Head Keeper for the Interpretive Collection) and Amanda Chambers (Team Leader for the same department) helped out our colleagues at The Sloth Institute Costa Rica (TSI). TSI was established in 2014 and is a branch of Kids Saving The Rainforest (KSTR). With high hopes of becoming more involved in conservation directly, our department formed a relationship with Sam Trull, Co-founder of TSI, last year. Since then, we have helped them purchase four radio-collars to track rehabilitated and wild sloths  with funds raised through our Moe’mentous Sloth Encounters, an experience at the Zoo that allows guests to meet Moe, our two-toed sloth (Choloepus didactylus).

Part of TSI’s mission is to rehabilitate injured and orphaned sloths, release them back into the wild, and then collect data on the released and wild sloths in the area of the release. The other part is to educate the local community about how to peacefully coexist with native wildlife, particularly sloths!

So off to Costa Rica we went last month in search of sloths and ways we could help TSI move their mission forward. Amanda and I had never traveled to Costa Rica before and were so excited with the anticipation of seeing so many different species of animals that we’ve only seen in captivity. We were not disappointed! Costa Rica has the largest concentration of species anywhere in the world. It is truly a biodiversity hotspot! It also has reserved a full 25% of its land for wildlife. This is an impressive number. Costa Rica, as I’m sure you can imagine if you’ve never been, is unbelievably beautiful. It hosts 13 different micro-climates that include desert, cloud forest, and tropical rainforest. For all these reasons, in addition to their beautiful beaches, Costa Rica is a major tourist destination.

Now, we have a hugely diverse group of flora and fauna, lots of protection from the government, amazing scenery, and lots of people coming to see it. Here’s the issue – bisection of the habitats. To get eco-tourists into these remote areas so they can have an experience that connects them with nature, there have to be roads. There also has to be electric wires and every other form of development that comes with humans. This then causes animals to come into closer contact with humans. Sloths are particularly vulnerable to roads, electric wires, and domestic dogs. While we were at KSTR one day, a female three-toed sloth and her day old baby were brought into the clinic. The tree the mom had been in had been cut down by someone and she fell and broke her arm. The next day, she gave birth and was rushed to KSTR for help. Unfortunately, electrocutions, car strikes, and dog attacks are all too common. I’m happy to report that mama sloth had a successful surgery to repair her arm and is recovering well with baby by her side.

Currently, Sam is hand-rearing nine baby sloths, and two other juveniles have been moved into a pre-release cage in a maritime zone along the Pacific coast in Manuel Antonio. All of this makes for lots to do. TSI relies almost completely on volunteers. They help feed the sloths (2:00 AM feeds for even an adorable baby sloth wear you out), construct cages, track wild sloths at the release site, lead educational tours, and log tons of data. Amanda and I spent a morning surveying the release area for sloths. Hannah, one of the researchers, said she had logged 25 separate sloths the day before. We walked up and down hills for hours, craning our necks and looking through binoculars. We found three.

Our days were also spent constructing sloth litter boxes (sloths climb down from the canopy about once a week to deposit their waste at the bottom of the tree) for the release cage, recording data on a wild mom and baby two-toed sloth pair, going to the local farmers’ market to buy goat milk for the babies, and transporting a sick sloth to the vet clinic an hour away to get a digital x-ray. We learned a lot about what wild sloths are eating and we are hoping to plant some of those trees in the Discovery Forest exhibit here at the Zoo where Moe lives.

During our trip, the Zoo launched a successful Booster t-shirt campaign for the care and feeding of Moe with part of the proceeds going to TSI. Thank you to everyone who bought a shirt and supported captive and wild sloths! Our goal is to remain active in Costa Rica with sloth conservation. We feel that community engagement in the Manuel Antonio area as well as the larger Costa Rican community is key and it is where we hope to focus all of our future ideas and actions as a department. Our Zoo has taught us to dream big and pursue our own experiences with conservation. We could not have done this without the support of our Zoo leaders and our Interpretive Team.

If you are interested in meeting Moe, our two-toed sloth, and learning more about how to get involved in sloth conservation, be sure to schedule a Moe’mentous Sloth Encounter with us soon. Also, be sure to follow The Sloth Institute on Facebook for updates on the upcoming releases of their rehabilitated sloths!