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

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 ~

Tigers and crocodiles and baboons- need your help!

Around the world, we have seen a decline in people travelling. There are many reasons for it but understanding the complex reasons don’t help the teams who are working around the clock to help animals. What will help is your time. We have local vets on the ground who are doing everything they can to save wildlife from trafficking. They are rehabilitating sick, injured and orphaned animals, releasing them as quickly as possible to help support the ecosystems that these animals are important members of.

How do you fit in? You can help support the vets by volunteering to do husbandry! These animals need to be fed, cleaned and given enrichment and support every single day. You can do that! And by doing that, you take these tasks off the plate of the vets. They can give better medical care to the animals, care for more animals and in turn release more animals. Cutting up 4lbs of bananas may seem easy, and it is but its vital to the survival of orphaned howler monkeys. Sweeping leaves out of an enclosure may seem easy, and it is but it’s crucial for the rehabilitation of antelope. Stuffing seeds into pre-drilled sticks may seem easy, and it is but it’s deeply important for the psychological care of wild birds before they are released back into the jungle.

We don’t need vets. There are vets on the programs. We need people to support the vets. To take part in easy but incredibly important feeding, cleaning and enrichment tasks. The more volunteers helping with these tasks, the higher the quality of life is for these animals, the more time the vets can focus on medical care and the sooner the animals can go back to their homes in the forest.

If you can volunteer in 2019, we will give you $100 off your fees. We need your help to help those helping animals.

So please, apply today.

"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!

A Photo 10 Years In The Making...

AEIs co-founders are two animal lovers named Nora and Heather. A lot of people ask how they met. Back in 2008 Nora got at job at a wildlife centre in Toronto and Heather was (and still is) the head wildlife veterinarian there. Nora was the volunteer coordinator. Fresh back from a volunteering and backpacking adventure in central, south and east Asia Nora felt like she knew what made exceptional volunteer programs and what didn’t. She didn’t have much experience coordinating volunteers but she thought if she stuck with the golden rule and treated the volunteers as she wanted to be treated, everything would be great!

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One day Nora was looking for resources and found a book: Something in a Cardboard Box. It was written by Les Stocker, the founder of a wildlife teaching hospital in England. The wildlife centre’s name? Tiggywinkles, named after the hedgehog in the Beatrix Potter series! Nora thought it sounded like an incredible place. Not only was it a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centre (Nora’s fav.) but it also was called Tigglewinkles. What a name! Icing on the cake was they helped rescue hedgehogs, badgers, red kites and all matter of wonderfully English and European animals. At that time it seemed like it was so far away maybe Nora could only dream of visiting. Nora showed the book to Heather and they talked about how Tiggywinkles had a great name, wonderful ethos and some of the most photogenic animals they have ever seen!

Fast forward to 2017. Nora and Heather now run Animal Experience International and have travelled all over North America, Australia, Europe, Asia and Africa visiting wildlife centres along the way. They signed up for the 2018 British Veterinary Nurse Association Conference in Telford England and got ready for another trip together.

2018 came and they had a wildly fun and successful conference and then realised Tiggywinkles was right around the corner- in Canadian terms! It was just an hour and a half drive from where they were staying.

On Tuesday they visited the centre and were able to be absolutely delighted by the professionalism, the warmness and the commitment to animal welfare at Tiggywinkles. For Nora it was a dream fulfilled to go to THE Tiggywinkles and she couldn’t have been more delighted than to share it with Heather. The trip to Tiggywinkles wasn’t just a great outing to see red kites, ravens, polecats and hedgehogs in sanctuary, it was also a marker for them- to see how far they had come. Something In A Cardboard Box was there when they met each other and now this centre was there to celebrate a work friendship that blossomed into a social enterprise with hundreds of volunteers and alumni around the world. And how did they celebrate? With their very own hedgehog selfie, a photo truly a decade in the making.

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?

_____

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.