Tales from the Jungle | May 2026

As usual, things moved at the complete opposite of sloth speed this month. It feels like we have lived through about six months in the space of four weeks (as you can probably tell from the length of this update…). But before anything else, let’s start with what is probably the biggest news of the decade for sloths.

The Start of the End for the Sloth Trade 

The past few weeks have marked a major turning point in the fight to end the commercial sloth trade in the United States. This month, I travelled to Orlando, Florida, alongside Sam Trull from The Sloth Institute to meet with local authorities regarding the Sloth World tragedy. Just a few days after our meetings, Florida announced a temporary halt on sloth imports into the state - which is a massive step forward considering that approximately 98% of sloth imports into the United States enter through Florida in the first place.

But despite this small win, the work is far from over. We are not satisfied with a temporary ban in just one state. We are calling for a permanent, nationwide ban on all sloth imports into the United States.

Together with The Sloth Institute, we have now officially joined forces to create the Sloth Protection Alliance: a collaborative effort dedicated to ending the commercial sloth trade once and for all. This week, we launched a petition calling for stronger protections for sloths and permanent legislative change. If you are able to take a moment to sign it, we would be very grateful.

We have also launched a joint fundraising campaign to support the next phase of this work. Since January, both of our organisations have poured hundreds of hours and thousands of completely unbudgeted dollars into investigations, meetings, travel, legal consultations, outreach, and policy development — all while continuing our day-to-day conservation work protecting sloths in the wild.

The reality is that opportunities like this rarely come around. For the first time, there is real momentum behind ending the commercial sloth trade in the United States, and we cannot afford to let that momentum fade. But we simply do not have the resources to carry this forward alone, and we need your help to keep pushing for lasting change.

New Lifetime Sloth Bridges

Sloth Crossing canopy bridge #400 is now just around the corner. But before we celebrate that milestone, we’re so excited to share that we have officially installed our very first Lifetime Bridge. These bridges are made from recycled fibre optic cables and, as the name suggests, are designed to last a lifetime. They can span much larger gaps than our traditional single-rope systems and provide a far more stable crossing point over major roads and open spaces.

This particular bridge stretches an impressive 50 metres and was definitely one of the most technically challenging installations we have ever attempted. It took the team three days to complete successfully!

We’ve also installed a camera trap on the bridge, and we can’t wait to see the first wildlife crossings (sloths were already trying to cross it before we had even finished the installation, so we know it’s going to be a popular one)

Research Updates

This month, we welcomed a new sloth into the Eternal Sloths project: little Nigel! The Urban Sloth Project also gained a new resident, Franklin, a two-fingered sloth living in a neighbouring tree close to Deborah. Naturally, the team is already wondering… could Franklin be the father of Deborah’s babies? It seems likely!

We’ve also begun studying sloth moths in more detail, and testing new trapping devices to better understand their ecology and relationship with sloths.

Habitat Mapping with Drones

This month we welcomed the drone specialists from Costa Rica Flying Labs, who joined us for an intensive two-day workshop focused on mapping habitat connectivity, assessing forest quality and how it has changed over time, and combining all of this with our sloth census data to build large-scale maps of sloth occurrence and population density across the region. This means that all of those painfully early-morning sloth census days are finally starting to pay off! 

As the project expands into new areas of the country, these tools are going to be very important for helping us understand how many sloths there are, where they are struggling, and how fragmentation is affecting them.

Training Sloth Certified Tour Guides

Tourism is one of the main economic activities in Costa Rica, and nearly half of all international tourists cite sloths as one of their primary reasons for visiting the country.

This can be a positive thing because it creates real economic value around protecting sloths. But ecotourism can also become a tool for exploitation when it is not done responsibly - and sloths are particularly vulnerable to this.

For this reason, we are working to train licensed tour guides in accurate sloth ecology, ethical wildlife observation, behaviour, conservation, and best-practice tourism standards.

This month, we launched our very first training workshop for 17 local tour guides, combining classroom sessions with practical fieldwork. We received far more applications than available spaces, but thankfully, this is only the beginning. We’re already planning future workshops.

Sloth HQ Construction Has FINALLY Begun

Finally. It happened at sloth speed, we know. That’s the Costa Rican way. But beginning construction is a big milestone.

After months of preparing the land, modifying plans, securing permits, coordinating inspections, and navigating what felt like approximately fourteen thousand years of paperwork, we have officially started the process. It still feels surreal to write those words. Soon, we’ll begin sharing the very first photos of the construction process.

The Sloth Fellowship

This month we also officially launched the Sloth Fellowship, formerly known as our VIP Program.

We want this to become much more than a donor program. We want it to be a real community of people who care deeply about sloths and conservation. This month, alongside the regular sloth updates from the field, we shared the story of Carter - a little boy who faced one of the biggest challenges of his life while finding unexpected comfort in the stories of the sloths we monitor every day (thankfully, it’s a story with a very happy ending)!

You can read Carter’s story here, and join the Sloth Fellowship here.

As we look ahead to June, I really cannot believe we are already halfway through the year. But I am also so proud of how much we have achieved in just the past six months. Momentum is high. We are a team on a mission.

If you would like to continue supporting our work, you can make a donation, symbolically adopt a sloth, join the Sloth Fellowship, share our fundraisers, or simply continue helping us raise awareness about the need to protect sloths and keep them in the wild.

Thank you, as always, for standing with us.

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