#wildtracks

[sunshinegearbox]

[thihalliwell]

Not bad, not bad at all! #australia #kurnell #bushwalk #wildtracks #downunder #sunnydays☀️ (at Kurnell, New South Wales) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_6761mpmpD/?igshid=1aambwrprizki

[ninaqueissner]

Pushing Wild Tracks further.

[giacomoverrando]

Capturing ambient sound in Mont Saint Michelle trying to avoid tourists quacking #documentaryphotography #documentary #ambientsounds #soundrecording #soundrecordistlife #soundrecordist #wildtracks #wordonfire (at Mont Saint-Michel)

[bvrinbelize]

Meet Hope, an 8 month old manatee who was rescued after being found stranded in someone's yard in Belize City after a hurricane in August. Manatees stay with their mothers until the age of two, so the staff at Wildtracks needs to fill in and provide food, contact, social support, and skill building lessons in the mothers place. Once old enough, she will gradually be weaned off of human dependence and released into the wild.

[wellingtonzoo]

I am lucky enough to get to help out in the nursery unit. The nursery is where some of the young Howler Monkeys and Spider Monkeys live at night time. During the day they go to play pens outside to climb and explore. I help to care for the 3 youngest Howler Monkeys in the nursery unit. Maggie is the oldest of the three at 10 months, Innie is 7 months and Vicky is only 4 months old.

Caring for the baby Howler Monkeys requires extreme dedication. They are fed 5 times a day with fruit, milk and leaves. Between 6.30am and 6pm they are in their outdoor play area where they are constantly under supervision. We take shifts watching over them, playing with them and feeding them.

At 6pm, after their last feed, they go to bed in their bedroom in the nursery. At first they cry but they soon snuggle up together in their hammock and fall asleep. Did you know Howler Monkeys purr when they are content?

  A recent arrival in the nursery unit is Squiggles, a baby Yucatan Grey Squirrel who was found abandoned at the base of a tree. I take him out for walks to get some fresh air and sunshine and to climb in trees. He usually rides on my shoulder but sometimes he climbs into my pocket!

My time volunteering at Wildtracks is coming to an end. I have had an amazing time here and have met some wonderful and dedicated people. Thank you to everyone at Wildtracks and thank you to Wellington Zoo for granting me conservation leave and allowing me to take this incredible opportunity!

[wellingtonzoo]

Hi there! I'm Anna, a Ranger at Wellington Zoo. I am currently volunteering at Wildtracks, a manatee and primate rehabilitation centre in Sarteneja, Belize.

Wildtracks currently has 42 Monkeys and 5 Manatees. There are also some other animals being rehabilitated here too; Deer, Peccaries, Curasaw and Margays. In this blog post I'm going to tell you a bit about the Manatees and how we take care of them.

Wildtracks provides facilities for all injured Manatees and orphaned Manatee calves found in Belize's waters, returns them to health, and releases them back into the wild.

There are 5 Manatees at Wildtracks at the moment. Duke and Rhameses are older male Manatees who live together in a big pool. Khaleesi is the only female and the youngest two are Mitch and Lucky.

The day starts at 6am, preparing milk for the Manatees and collecting banana leaves and water hyacinths for feeding. The Manatees get bottle fed at regular intervals throughout the day with the last feed for Mitch and Lucky at 8pm.

We also swim with the Manatees several times throughout the day. This is mainly to keep them active and exercising but also for them to have some contact and companionship. Mitch in particular loves to come over and be with people.

Each day the pools get emptied and scrubbed down thoroughly and new water from the lagoon gets pumped in. The algae grows back surprisingly fast and it's all hands on deck to scrub it off during these cleans.

The Manatees are such gentle creatures and it is really rewarding and a wonderful opportunity to be able to work with them and to help with the conservation of their species.

[twiggyvas-blog]

BLOG: Caring for Endangered Monkeys

Three months ago, in February 2014, I arrived at Wildtracks for a one month placement, bright eyed and bushy tailed. A waitress by trade, a bit of a drifter, and without any previous volunteering or animal care experience. I arrived just a few weeks before my 30th birthday armed solely with enthusiasm and a love for all gods’ creatures (except maybe scorpions, of which I have now encountered two!). I expected to be scrubbing manatee pools and cleaning up monkey excrement but in a whirlwind four weeks I found myself involved in an array of jobs that keep places like Wildtracks ticking over; bottle-feeding baby deer, swimming with manatees, feeding (and being attacked by) the curassow and helping care for Kenya, one of the baby howlers, who was in quarantine at the time. Then there were the slew of maintenance jobs; gathering fruit and browse for the feeds, cleaning sea grass, gardening, watering, and the washing of dishes. My 30th birthday? That was spent with my workmates dancing “The Wobble” in a dingy little Sartaneja bar! And so that was it. A month gone in the blink of an eye.

And as my boyfriend flew from the UK to Cancun ready to meet me to start our 3 year trip around the world, I found myself more and more attached to little Kenya and really not that ready to leave. But all the flights were booked; Miami, Cuba and Jamaica were waiting. Luckily it didn’t take much at all to convince him that a one-month pit stop, to care for some endangered animals, was just the ticket.

And so as we returned a few months later I watched him go through all the emotions I’d gone through in my first four weeks. From shell-shocked and unsure in the first week, to tired and irritable in the second, to confident and comfortable in the third. And as we sat before bedtime on the step to our bunkhouse, with a mosquito coil at our feet and the torchlight shining out into the jungle, we’d moan about the weather (well, we are British after all!), the bugs, the sunburn, the scrapes, the bruises and the monkey bites. But we’d also talk about our monkeys and those magical little moments that made that long and exhausting day worth it, and it was then that we’d realize that we were on the same page. He finally understood what I’d been gibbering on about when I came to meet him in Cancun just a few months previously.

And what was it like for me returning for the second time? Well, I was lucky enough to do the one job Wildtrackers dream about. I spent my days up in the nursery caring for the babies. I fed them and cleaned them. I comforted them when they were anxious, encouraged them when they were unsure, and cheered them up when they were sad. And I got to be involved in little Kenya’s integration sessions with the rest of the babies. Her new family, her troop, “The A-Team”!

And for my 40th birthday? I might return to that little bar to dance “The Wobble” again and search for a glimpse of The A-team in the Belizean jungle. And maybe Queen Kong will have popped out a few little konglets, and maybe we’ll have finally stopped destroying the planet, and maybe animals around the world will no longer be endangered and places like Wildtracks will no longer need to exist. We can but hope, right?

read more Wildtracks volunteer blogs at:

http://www.wildtracksbelize.org/rehab/blog/