Sloth Crossings

Sloth Crossing canopy bridges

Without a natural or artificial canopy bridge the only way for a sloth to cross a road is by crawling.

This takes a lot of time and energy and leaves them very vulnerable to traffic collisions, dog attacks and human disturbance.

Sloths maternally inherit highly specific home-ranges and are unable to adapt by moving to a new area when faced with habitat disturbance.

By installing Sloth Crossing wildlife bridges, we aim to restore habitat connectivity and enable sloths and other arboreal wildlife to safely navigate the places we share with them.

Bridging the gap:

  • Collaborating with ICE (the national electric company) to install wildlife bridges across roads.
  • Collaborating with local property owners (as part of the Connected Gardens Project) to install rope bridges for wildlife on private properties.

Thanks to the coordinated efforts of our generous donors, concerned community members and the SloCo team, many species are now able to safely navigate the habitat that we share with them.

After the bridge has been installed, we follow up with property owners and install camera traps in order to determine which species are using the bridges. These special wildlife cameras are programmed to start recording video whenever the sensors detect heat or movement.

By using camera traps like this it enables biologists and conservationists to easily collect ecological data and photographic evidence of elusive and often critically endangered species at little cost and with minimal disturbance.

By remotely monitoring wildlife in this way it can allow us to spy on some of the rarest events in nature – events that just wouldn’t happen if there were any humans around.

This map shows all of the places that we have installed Sloth Crossing wildlife bridges (blue) and planted trees through our reforestation efforts (green) since March 2019.

SPONSOR A SLOTH CROSSING

“I’m not sure there is another example of a conservation effort with such instant gratification!"

” My background is wildlife biology, environmental law/policy, and animal welfare.  In my 20+ years working in those fields, I have never seen such a simple, yet effective way to immediately mitigate habitat loss. Kudos to all involved!” -Michelle Land, New York