Meet The Wild Residents of La Mariposa
At the La Mariposa main site, we house a number of wild animals that are not eligible for rerelease into the wild. We try to ensure they enjoy the highest quality of life in captivity by giving them large enclosures, tranquil natural settings, and healthy diets. While always do our best to release wild animals that come to us whenever possible, this cannot always be achieved.
For example, some 5 years ago we considered setting the white faced monkeys free in the Masaya Volcano national park where there was a group of about 16 living free. Then a terrible fire destroyed most of the remaining forest and the monkeys have not been seen since.
Other reasons for not releasing certain animals…..
- In some cases most of their habitat has been destroyed. This is particularly worrying in the case of the monkeys where most of the local wooded land has either burnt down or been clear cut to plant export crops such as dragon fruit.
- Furthermore, we cannot release the spider or white faced monkeys into Canada Honda as they walk on the ground (the howler monkeys do not, they stay in trees and live there quite happily). If they leave the reserve they will be easily caught again and most likely put back on very short chains, as Chica and Simona were before they came to us.
- Chica, the tame spider monkey, was a pet for 20 years. This is another problem…very tame parrots and monkeys are likely to wander into someones banana patch and eat a few. This will not ensure their safety.
- Before they came to live with us, our white-faced capuchin monkeys (an endangered species) spider monkeys, and some of the parrots were being illegally sold in the exotic pet trade. They were all very young when they arrived. Some were babies, so small they had to be hand fed several times a day. While still very much wild creatures, they are too tame to survive outside captivity.
