Happy New Year from Kids Saving the Rainforest!
By Jennifer Rice
Great things are happening here at KSTR with more exciting things to come during the new year!
We have received permission to move our Rescue Center to the Finca in the country, which is also where the KSTR Sanctuary, sustainable farm and the Blue Banyan Inn are located. Our official move date is 3/15/2013.
We would like to welcome our new Volunteer Coordinator/Vet Tech, Samantha Trull. Samantha is a primatologist, worked as a Primate Technician at the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina and has worked with the Broadreach Primate Studies group, helping kids get hands-on work to further the survival and preserve habitats of endangered primates.
Pia Martin, our extraordinary Vet, will be sharing time between important positions as the KSTR Rescue Center Vet, as our Regente, and new work with the Raptor Center. Our vet clinic in the Rescue Center will be expanded and will have a large glass wall where tour visitors can watch while our vet Pia is here doing her animal checkups. She will have a microphone so visitors can hear her describe details of her exams as she does her work.
Our fascinating new educational component will give folks a chance to see and learn about the animals not able to be released who are living at the KSTR Sanctuary. Also, on the property, (but not for public viewing), will be animals in rehabilitation from the Rescue Center that can be released, including a kinkajou, a sloth, a porcupine, an owl and a few titi monkeys.
We are planning to build a new wildlife enclosure at the Sanctuary, which will be the home for several non-preditory species of animals from Costa Rica’s rainforest living in different levels of the canopy. It will have a ground level pathway that travels inside the enclosure and then stairs that will lead to a swinging bridge to view the enclosure from a higher altitude. The trail will end on the other side of the property next to the wetlands. We are hoping to be able to learn from a troop of titi monkeys we hope to create for this enclosure.
Vernita Gundy, a volunteer from 2011, will return to live and volunteer with us starting in May. She is helping us with our ever increasing load of administrative work and hopefully she will write grants for us!
Martie, our long term intern, is a real trooper! She served Thanksgiving dinner to 34 monkeys during a torrential downpour! Our employees and volunteers from the Virginia Zoo group got to taste our first harvested corn with their Thanksgiving feast! Yum!!!
We were so glad that our Co-founder Janine Licare was able to spend her Thanksgiving here with us. We love you Janine and you should be proud of what you and Aislin started!
We’re pleased that “Kids Saving the Rainforest” and Jennifer Rice, have been chosen as one of the six “Making a Difference Awards 2012” winners by the Chamber of Commerce of Manuel Antonio for the contributions made to our local community to help protect the natural resources of Manuel Antonio.
We are very busy making improvements for the future of the monkeys and Kids Saving the Rainforest’s many lifesaving projects.
KSTR would like to say THANK YOU to you, who have made our progress possible, and best wishes for a Happy and Healthy New Year!