Dreams do come true
Those of you who have been following SloCo’s work for the last few years know that our modus operandi is community-based projects: reforestation, urban mitigation, powerline insulation, wildlife bridges, responsible tourism campaigns, and more. However, our ultimate goal has always been to protect wildlife habitat before it needs restoring, and to that end, we are really excited to announce that SloCo is creating a 20-hectare reserve of primary forest in the South Caribbean of Costa Rica!

This land will be the beginnings of a nature reserve (focused on sloths of course, but we all know how many other animals will benefit as well!), and to ensure that the land stays protected, SloCo will be re-headquartering to our new Sloth Reserve. The paperwork was signed last week, and we know you are as excited about this journey as we are!
If you’d like to see even more land protected, click here to donate to the Sloth Reserve. For only $5 you can add one square meter of primary rainforest to this project, and ensure that the plants and animals that call it home will continue to do so.
We’re an association!
Although SloCo received legal status as a foreign organization in 2020, this year we finally got our official papers classifying us as an association. This legal technicality is important to the government of Costa Rica, and we can now apply for national funds and grants, sell merchandise (and apply the proceeds to the sloths!), and organize fundraisers and tours that can help finance our conservation projects.
Rescuing sloths
SloCo is not a rescue center, but we do have over a decade of experience handling, dealing with, and rescuing sloths. We get calls pretty frequently to come to save sloths from injury or dangerous situations, who we then take to rescue centers with the facilities to help them. This month we sprang to the rescue of a two-fingered sloth that had survived an electrocution of an uninsulated power line (whom we named Freckles) and a baby three-fingered sloth who was found orphaned.
Thermal drone project
Dayber (our wildlife crossing installer) just got his official drone pilot’s license, and will be using our new thermal drone to assist in the Great Sloth Census project. He’ll be working alongside Tamara and our sloth-detection dog Keysha.
For more information on how to spot sloths with drones, check this incredible video of our colleagues in Brazil using a drone to find endangered maned sloths!
Giving Tuesday with sloths
Last Tuesday so many of you joined us to celebrate this international day of giving, and we are so thankful to have raised over $5,000 to help continue our goal of saving sloths in the wild. Missed Giving Tuesday? Don’t worry, it’s not too late! Check out ways to donate here. Remember that if you live in the US your donation is tax-deductible, and if you live in the UK you can increase your donation by 25% with Gift Aid!
Deborah, a new sloth to adopt!
Meet Deborah, a beautiful two-fingered sloth whose territory neighbors Mango’s and Pumpkin’s! Deborah has joined the Urban Sloth Project, and if you’d like to know more about this lovely little sloth, click below to adopt her!
Adopt Deborah!
Speaking of adoptions, check out our new adoption pack! In addition to a copy of the best-selling book Sloths: Life in the Slow Lane, the printed biography of your chosen sloths, photo, and certificate, you also get a hand-made crocheted sloth–the perfect gift for your favorite sloth lover! Order today and your package will arrive just before the holidays!
Fails Of the Month
White-eyed sloths
SloCo has been busy with the sloth rescuing this month, and we’ve seen a disturbing trend along Playa Negra road: sloths with cloudy eyes. Several sloths had to be transferred to veterinary care over the course of November, and they all had a thing in common: they were living next to dusty and busy roads. We suspect that a mix of stress and dust is harming their eyes, and SloCo will continue to monitor the situation to see if this trend progresses.
Endless bureaucracy
These past few months ICE (the Costa Rican electric company) has been doing some major overhauls in their management structure, which has translated to delays in a lot of areas, such as collaborating with other organizations such as SloCo. It’s quite frustrating to be sitting on the funds for powerline insulation while we wait on the go-ahead from the government, but as we cannot legally proceed without them, wait we must.
Receiver broken
In a new chapter of Technology versus The Jungle (current score: Jungle – 3,256, Tech – 4), the jungle has once again eaten one of our tracking receivers. The receivers are key to tracking the radio signal of our Urban Sloths, without which we cannot monitor them! Thankfully this isn’t our first rainforest rodeo, and we always have a spare.
____________________________________________________________________
The end of year brings both the holiday season and a time to reflect on what has been, once again, a wonderful journey. In our next edition of Tales of the Jungle, we’ll have a recap with all the highlights of the past 12 months that we have been so proud and happy to have shared with you! Sloth conservation is sometimes a rough road, and we never forget how grateful we are to our partners in this quest. Thank you!
All the best from the jungle,
-SloCo Team