We honored a tiny orphaned sloth who arrived at our clinic many years ago in need of a mother. She was not responding well to human care and we were at a loss of how to save this fading baby. Suddenly, it clicked–we could use one of our adult sloths as a foster mother! And we had the perfect candidate.
Latte, a healthy one-year-old in our Saving Sloths Together Program, had also lost her mother at a critical age but was now thriving. In the wild, she would likely already have a baby of her own to care for, so we thought “Why not give it a try?” And it worked! Latte accepted Chispa as her own and we were able to successfully raise her until she was ready for release.
The story of our sweet Latte adopting orphaned Chispa warmed our hearts and proved that a mother’s love exceeds DNA. Though Chispa has long since been released and donations to this Campaign do not support her specific care, we wanted to highlight what a donation to this Campaign DOES support.
The Adoptive Mama Latte & Baby Chispa Memorial Campaign helps support each and every orphaned baby and juvenile in our Saving Sloths Together Program. This Program, established in 2017, has successfully improved the process of sloth rescue, rehabilitation, and release in Costa Rica. A unique component of this Program is the ability to take a hand-raised, orphaned sloth and give it a second chance at a wild life. The concept of releasing captive-raised sloths back into the wild is a feat that has rarely been achieved successfully, however, here at Toucan Rescue Ranch we have rewilded nearly 70 orphaned sloths and counting!
And we need your support: this is our largest class of babies in rehabilitation yet.
A donation to our Adoptive Mama Latte & Baby Chispa Memorial Campaign does not support a baby in need–it supports our entire Saving Sloths Together Program at the source: our nursery.
A donation to this Campaign sponsors bottles of fresh goat’s milk, delivered to us every week to feed our newborn babies. It funds the blankets, warming disks, buckets, syringes, and all the supplies it takes to raise them. It finances innovative procedures, specialized treatments, and life-saving surgeries that ensure we are giving these animals the best opportunity at a wild future. It supports the cost of labor to pay our dedicated staff who wake up every morning at 7 AM to administer medical care, clean enclosures, and feed sloths in every stage of life, as well as the staff who sacrifice hours of sleep every night to provide our critical care patients with around-the-clock attention.
In honor of all the mothers who had to leave their precious babies behind in this life, donate today and help the Toucan Rescue Ranch save countless more orphaned sloths.
