El Parque
Week 6. 20:24 on Tr 13 June 2019. Parque Ambue Ari, Beni province, Bolivia
About 7 hours’ drive north from Santa Cruz de la Sierra and 4.5 hours’ drive east-southeast of Trinidad you’ll find a place referred to as “El Parque.” A number of signs along the road indicate “animales silvestres” in the area. If you were to ask locals what goes on there, you might be told that it’s a place where a bunch of dirty gringos in oversized clothes and muck boots walk around with jugs of water and buckets of meat.
From the outside it’s hard to say exactly what goes on at Ambue Ari. Fortunately I’ve now spent 6 weeks at this almost inexplicable place, so I now feel more qualified to explain what the heck I’ve been doing in this lost sector of Bolivia.
Back on the 2nd of May my bus dropped me off at a seemingly random point on a dirt road. As the dust cleared when the bus continued north, I saw signs across the road for Ambue Ari; I’d arrived at my home of the next 2 months. Already there was someone coming to greet me, and I was thrilled to learn that in addition to being the volunteer coordinator, Amy was a kiwi.
Ambue Ari is the largest of three wildlife sanctuaries operated by Comunidad Inti Wara Yassi, a Bolivian organization that uses volunteers to care for the rescued wildlife of Bolivia. While much of the work at Ambue Ari is with big cats like jaguars and pumas, the park also contains howler monkeys, night monkeys, ocelots, various parrots, a tapir, and coatis. These wild animals have been rescued from completely inappropriate living situations in family homes, from lives as exotic attractions at restaurants, and from illegal trafficking in Bolivia. Regardless of their stories, these animals need a safe place to live where they can live as natural of lives as possible without posing a problem to humans. They can’t live in the wild because they don’t have the necessary fear of humans and the skills to survive on their own.
The park operates on an “island” of jungle that is actually nearly surrounded by farmland. What was once an almost 1000 acre haven for wildlife is now closer to 800 acres due to encroachment by farmers. Despite this, wild howler monkeys, squirrel monkeys, capuchin monkeys, and wild parrots can be seen and heard daily. From camera traps set up near some of the park’s animal enclosures, we know that wild jaguars and pumas often visit our animals. In a region that’s losing wild land, the park’s presence is critical for both captive and wild animals.
CIWY couldn’t operate without the dedication of volunteers from around the world. A small core staff works on contracts of 6-12 months, but most animal care comes from travelers who give 2 plus weeks of their traveling time to volunteer. Work with jaguars, pumas, or ocelots requires at least a month’s stay so that the cats aren’t seeing a constant stream of changing faces. Small animal care tends to fall to those volunteers who can’t stay as long.
The form of work varies from animal to animal. In general, jaguars, pumas, and ocelots are walked on trails through the jungle for a few hours per day. Volunteers are attached to their animals through a rope and carabiner system that allows the cats to walk just like a dog on a leash. Many of the cats at the park have lived with this system for years, and they know how to follow the rope back to the trail if they veer off to check some off-trail smells. A similar system allows night monkeys to climb trees just before dawn and around dusk.
Some cats are more wild and therefore can’t be taken out of their cages, so volunteers walk laps around the outside of their cages to encourage exercise. Each animal is different, and some cats don’t need enrichment from a walk; instead they prefer simply to have volunteers’ presence inside or outside their cage.
The parrots and jungle chickens living in the aviary have the least enrichment because they don’t have room to fly. Volunteers bring fresh vegetation from the jungle inside the enclosure to provide the birds with flowers and green leaves to eat. Supposedly constructing a new aviary with live trees and plants inside is on the docket, but CIWY suffers from a lack of funding. (If anyone reading this wants to donate, please do! I worked in the aviary for my first month, and the limited space and constant cutting of forest to provide greenery broke my spirit.)
Volunteers live in the park as a community focused on providing food and enrichment to the animals’ lives. Work with all the animals occurs 6 days a week, and a skeleton crew feeds the small animals on Saturday while the majority of volunteers have the day off. Most choose to come to Ascension de Guarayos, the large town that lies an hour’s bus ride from the park, for internet, better food, and mosquito-free life on Saturdays.
My stay here at the park has been an experience in rustic living. 3 ladies cook lunch and dinner for us, and they seem to know only 10-15 dishes. With the limited budget, I suppose it’s understandable, but we all wish for more produce and fewer carbohydrates in our meals. Ca