Self Sufficient Living… HMMMMMM…What is that? I am a US citizen who lives in the City of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania and although I’ve heard of self-sufficient living, I have never learned what it actually meant until now. Self-sufficient living means self reliance in learning to grow your own, make your own, sell your own and bake your own, for homesteading, urban homesteading or mini farms.
I’ve been in Costa Rica volunteering for Kids Saving the Rainforest the last 3 months and I have slowly started to understand what it is all about and how important it is to change our way of living so we can all be on this earth for years to come.
Some animals are happy to be pets, like cats, dogs and fish. Other animals want to live in the wild, like monkeys. My name is Nina and I’m a spider monkey. I started off happily in the wild.
Life was great I would wake up in the morning to the “hooo doottt hooo doottt” of the Motmots. I would go for breakfast with my brother Manny or a swing with my sister Stella until one day I woke up to a different sound…
There’s a whole new world of terms out there that may be confusing to you, such as Carbon Footprint and Carbon Neutral. We are going to explain them and hopefully teach you to reduce your carbon footprint!
So, just what does Carbon Footprint mean? Carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide given out through the use of fossil fuels by a person on a daily basis.
Do you want to know how much carbon do you emit? There are lots of websites on the internet to calculate your footprint, but the one listed below is one that seems to work easily. www.zerofootprintoffsets.com (Please note that you have to say that you live in the US or Canada to get your calculations).
This is one of 3 children’s stories written by the 16 year old Ellenburg Triplets. Their 3 stories will become a a book to be sold by KSTR to teach children the importance of saving the rainforest. It will be available next year.
There once was a monkey named Marcel. He lived in a beautiful rainforest filled with perky parrots and colorful flowers. Marcel was very happy here. He swung in the trees and ate fruit and bugs all day long.
One, day big monsters made out of metal came to the rainforest and started cutting trees down. They made loud roars and scared Marcel and all his friends and family. The people driving the machines said, “We need these trees to make paper and all kinds of things.”
The Petersons were very excited. They were going to Costa Rica! They had heard lots of fantastic things about the country, and they couldn’t wait to see the monkeys. “I wonder if they like bananas”, said Tommy, the youngest of the Petersons. “Of course they do” said Mr. Peterson. “ALL monkeys love bananas”. Read More…
Kids Saving the Rainforest is proud to present the newest member of its permanent staff – Pablo Porras-Peñaranda. Pablo, a biologist by training, will now serve as the Volunteer Coordinator. KSTR is a local non-profit organization based in Manuel Antonio whose goal is to preserve and educate about the rainforest and its many animals. As the organization’s popularity and mission has grown, the number of interested volunteers has increased. Read More…
We are very proud of KSTR’s co-founders, Janine Licare and Aislin Livingstone. They have both just graduated from two very prestigious colleges, Janine from Stanford in California and Aislin from McGill in Montreal. Congratulations to you both! Janine starts right away with a two-year program, Teach For America, teaching elementary school children (with English as a second language) in East Los Angeles. Janine will concurrently be getting a Master’s Degree in Education at Loyola Marymount University. We are thrilled that she will be able to teach these kids about the rainforest, it’s destruction, and then empower them to save it! Read More…
Kinkajous (Potos flavus) and in Spanish “Martillas”, are medium size mammals (40-55cms long, weighing 2-3kg), brownish colored from the Procyonid family. This means they are nocturnal, live in pairs or by themselves and are arboreal and terrestrial; just like raccoons (Procyon lotor) and coatis (Nasua narica). However, they have unique characteristics that make them very special in the rainforest. For example: although they are categorized as carnivores, they do not eat meat. Their diet is basically fruits, flowers, and rarely they will eat a bird’s egg or an insect. They have a 5 inch tongue that helps them get nectar from flowers making them pollinators. Their ankles and wrists can rotate more than most mammals helping them climb up and down trees and walk in branches easily. They also have a long prehensile tail that can wrap itself around a branch and hold on to most of the animal’s weight so it can hang and reach for a fruit in a lower branch.
White face monkeys are very intelligent new world monkeys. They are omnivores who eat fruits, veggies, insects, eggs, lizards and almost anything that moves. In the wild they are always in the canopy and travel during the morning and afternoon in troops of 7 or more individuals. They are very active, curious, and playful all the time. Their big eyes, pink nose, stand up position and fingers make them very similar to people. Many humans get confused and think that this cute animal will become fabulous and funny pets. However they can’t be more wrong.
By Jennifer Rice PhD, President of KSTR & Pia Martin DVM, KSTR Manager and Wildlife Vet
Have you ever wondered what Kids Saving the Rainforest does? Well, now is your chance to find out:
• We have a MINAET licensed Wildlife Rescue Center in the heart of ManuelAntonio with over 4 acres of land, 11 cages, and housing for our vet and rehabber. Last year KSTR rescued and rehabilitated 116 animals and released 50% of them. The average in other center worldwide is 33% so we are very pleased with the success rate.
Kids Saving The Rainforest has been very busy with lots of great news that we want to share with you.
We now have our official Zoological Garden license. We use this license for our wildlife sanctuary to house any wildlife that can’t be released back into the rainforest, animals that would have to be euthanized if we did not care for them. Currently there are over 20 monkeys protected at the Sanctuary which is called the Kids Saving The Rainforest Educational Center. Read More…
The Wildlife Rescue Center was very busy in 2010 and it was also very successful. We received 116 injured, sick, or orphaned animals, which is 37 more than we received in 2009. Most of them were titi monkeys and both species of sloths, the 3 toed and the 2 toed. However we also treated porcupines, kinkajous, white face monkeys, howler monkeys, ocelots (a wild cat also know as the Dwarf Leopard), and even one otter, among others! Our success rate is increasing year after year, right now with a remarkable statistic of over 50% release percentage. We feel very enthusiastic by this number considering that other wildlife rescue centers barely release up to third of the animals accepted.
Kids Saving the Rainforest recently partnered with Blue Banyan Inn, an environmentally friendly bed and breakfast located right outside of Manuel Antonio.
The Blue Banyan is part of a 75-acre ecologically sustainable community, encompassing KSTR’s new Wildlife Sanctuary and International Volunteer Center, tilapia farms, nurseries, and botanical gardens. As a KSTR volunteer, I spent part of my time volunteering at the Blue Banyan Inn, helping them move towards their goal of becoming fully self-sustainable. My primary job, along with Rodrigo and Tio, two of the workers on staff, was to harvest a food source for the animals housed at the sanctuary.
You see them every day parading across monkey bridges and electrical lines, but the recent electrocution of six titi monkeys in Pocares reminds us that there is still a need for a better balance between our modern world and the surrounding eco-community. While we need electrical lines to power our needs, the trouble for wildlife starts when the wires—either two primary or a primary and secondary—make contact with a grounded object, such as a tree or land, or with each other. When this occurs, the wires become electrified, creating a dangerous situation for monkeys accustomed to using them as a means of passage.
As part of our ongoing efforts to educate people about the rainforest and its inhabitants, KSTR is tracking the decline of indigenous frog populations within and outside of Costa Rica.
For the past three decades, scientists in Central and North America have been closely following a wave of disease that has wiped out amphibians in the Central American highlands. The fungal disease, called chytridiomycosis, has been advancing at a rate of about 30 kilometers per year and eradicating dozens of frog species in its path. Scientists have identified this as the same disease that killed off Costa Rica’s golden frogs in the 1980s.
