If there’s one thing fieldwork teaches you, it’s that nothing ever goes entirely to plan, and that’s exactly what makes it exciting.

We don’t know how many sloths there are.
We don’t even know how many there should be.
And that’s a problem.

Sloths are masters of camouflage, blending seamlessly into the dense rainforest canopy to avoid predators – and, unfortunately, researchers.

If you’ve been following our work, you might already know Deborah – a two-fingered sloth we’ve been tracking through the Urban Sloth Project for several years. 

One of the most rewarding parts of our work is seeing sloths and other wildlife actually using the Sloth Crossing canopy bridges that we have built.

We donated five Sloth Crossing canopy bridges to help reconnect fragmented forest habitats in Mata de São João, Bahia, Brazil, home to the rare and endangered Northern Maned Sloth (Bradypus torquatus).

Sloths and giant armadillos belong to the superorder Xenarthra, and although they may seem like very different animals—one living high in the canopy and the other underground in burrows—they actually have many things in common, especially when it comes to conservation challenges.

We do a lot of work to help wild sloths, and it’s great when we receive, for example, reports of them using our canopy bridges; but besides the photo or the video, we don’t know anything else about those sloths. So it’s very interesting when we have the opportunity to closely study and follow a particular sloth because we can learn so much from them. Today we want to share with you the story of a very special sloth named Angel.

This short documentary, filmed and edited by Mira Meijer, follows Dr. Cliffe and The Sloth Conservation Foundation team on the journey to a healthy sloth population and peaceful coexistence with humans in the growing town of Puerto Viejo in Costa Rica.

The Osa Peninsula, located in the South Pacific area of Costa Rica, is one of the most biodiverse hotspots on the planet, containing 2.5% of global terrestrial biodiversity in just 1,200 km²! On social media, you can see footage of tour guides constantly spotting tapirs, monkeys, and even jaguars.

In our last update, we shared with you the amazing milestone of our bridge n°300. In case you missed it, you can read all the details in this blog! We’ve started studying the usage of the Sloth Crossings, so that other colleagues and organizations can see the effectiveness of these types of bridges and replicate this project in other parts of the world.

Tortuguero is one of the most unique places in Costa Rica. It’s a small village with no streets or cars, which makes sense, as there are no roads leading there.

To celebrate Sloth Month in October last year, our friends at JetSloth and Gravity Forms generously donated $10,000 to plant 1000 trees in the South Caribbean of Costa Rica. JetSloth and Gravity Forms are among the most popular tools for creating and managing website forms (including ours!).

For SloCo, December is a time for reflection and review; we write our annual reports, study what went wrong, celebrate what went right, and continuously look for what we can improve. Overall 2022 has been a great year for us: we’ve achieved (and exceeded!) so many goals that our motto for the year has become “Dreams Really Do Come True”!

We’ve got a lot of exciting news for you this time, involving science, papers, our recent research project, and of course some amazing footage of wildlife using our bridges! We’re also very excited to announce that we are getting really close to our 200th Sloth Crossing– Only 16 more bridges to go! Stay tuned, we’re almost there!

Hello Sloth Crossings Community! In this update, we’ll be covering the highlights of the project from January through April. We’re proud to say that the project continues to expand to new levels and new areas!

What an amazing year we had! When we started this project we had no idea that we’d be installing more than 100 bridges… and in a few weeks, we’ll hit sloth crossing number 150! 

We understand that it is important for you to know that your donations are being used in the most effective way possible to help sloths. We are committed to always being completely transparent with our accounts, operations, successes, and failures.