Tales from the Jungle | April 2026

April is usually a quieter month here in the jungle - steady, predictable, and (relatively) calm. But not this time. It’s been a big month, and there’s a lot to share. But before we dive into everything, here are a few highlights to start.

Building a Network for Education

This month, we began our first educational workshops with local kindergarten schools, working alongside our colleagues from Asociación Guardianes del Bosque (ASOGUABO).

We also officially became part of the Environmental Education Network of Talamanca, a coalition of organisations working together with the Ministry of Education to strengthen environmental education across the region.

The Great Sloth Census: A Milestone

After three years of continuous work, we have officially completed the first stage of the Great Sloth Census. This project has involved everything from trained detection dogs and hundreds of hours of drone flights, to long days walking transects through the forest with an incredible team of staff and volunteers. What once felt like an ambitious idea has now become a reality.

We have finished surveying our initial region, and the next step is to expand this work to other parts of the country.

At the same time, we are applying for a collaborative research grant with our colleagues at Instituto Preguiça-de-Coleira and the Ecology Department of the State University of Santa Cruz in Brazil. If successful, this will allow us to share knowledge, refine our methods, and take this work beyond Costa Rica to a continental scale. Fingers crossed!

Earth Month in Action

April is also Earth Month, and this year we focused on restoring coastal habitat that has been damaged by erosion and recent storms. Our initial goal was to raise $10,000, but together, we reached $12,000!

Thanks to that support, we have already planted the first 240 trees and installed two canopy bridges, working alongside our partners at Tropica Verde, ASOGUABO, Ara Manzanillo, and the Jaguar Rescue Center.

We are also preparing to install our first “lifetime” canopy bridges in this zone. These are a new bridge design constructed from recycled electricity cables, featuring a more complex structure. As the name suggests, they are built to last a lifetime and provide a permanent solution for canopy gaps.

Sloth World Orlando Update

This month also brought difficult news. 53 sloths are now confirmed to have died at Sloth World Orlando. Following public pressure, the facility has closed, and the surviving animals have been transferred to the AZA-accredited Central Florida Zoo & Botanical Garden, where they are now receiving care.

This outcome was the result of months of work behind the scenes. Since December, we have been working alongside our friends at The Sloth Institute, gathering information, raising concerns, and supporting investigative journalists to bring the truth to light.

We are feeling enormous grief for the animals that were lost, and relief that this facility will never open. But the work is far from over. We are now meeting with lawmakers in the US to push for stronger protections, to ensure this can never happen again, and to hold those responsible legally accountable for the suffering that has taken place.

Veterinarian at the Central Florida Zoo with one of the rescued sloths

A Collective Effort

And of course, none of this would have been possible without you. Without the people who sent us the first messages alerting us to what was happening. Without the brave former employees who came forward to share their stories. Without the thousands of people commenting, sharing, and speaking up on social media. Once again, it’s the collective effort, the many small actions coming together, that creates real impact.

If you’d like to help us continue this work and protect more sloths, there are a few ways to get involved. You can symbolically adopt a sloth (with Mother’s Day just around the corner), donate to help us plant trees and restore their habitat, or support the often invisible work of conservation -  the work that happens behind desks and in meetings, but ultimately changes the rules of the game so places like Sloth World Orlando never exist again.

We may be a small Costa Rican non-profit made up of scientists and conservationists, but we are something much bigger when we have our community behind us. Thank you for having our backs. We have big plans for the future, and we hope you’ll continue this journey with us into what comes next.

Thank you for everything.

All the best from the jungle (where the sloths belong),