EnglishThis year’s pandemic is causing extra poaching for the pet trade in Central America. Endangered baby spider monkeys are now much more likely to be stolen from their mothers and sold into a life of captivity.
But there’s good news: you can help!
Giving Tuesday officially kicks off the holiday giving season. Will you please send a year-end gift today to protect at least one baby spider monkey during the coming year?
Your gift will protect a baby spider monkey by thwarting poachers and stopping other threats. This young monkey will thrive if it grows in a forest protected by your support.
Victor, one of our rangers, recently told us about his experience with a baby monkey and its mother. Victor’s story will show you how needed and powerful your gift is!
Victor and his brother started monitoring black-handed spider monkeys in El Salvador last year. The monkeys in their area are so shy that most people believed them to be locally extinct. Last spring, these rangers found a small troop with a baby and its mother.
When our rangers approached, the mother monkey was terrified. To Victor, it was plain that she had seen poachers before. She shielded her baby from view and tried to hastily move away. But with her baby clinging to her chest, she was slower—an easy target for poachers.
She didn’t know it, but that day she was fortunate. The men below were friendly rangers there to protect her family.
If they had been poachers, she would have been killed. Her little baby would have been pried off her dead body, taken to a market, and sold. Its buyers would have likely chained the infant and fed it table scraps for the remainder of its life. This horrific tragedy happens every year, and we fear this coming season will be worse because of COVID-19.
Victor and his brother protected that mother and baby. He stopped the poaching this year, but he knows that the poachers will soon return.
You can see why it’s so important to act now. The consequences of waiting are heartbreaking, and they can’t be undone. It’s urgent that you give before the end of the year. If the spider monkeys aren’t protected this coming year, poachers will kill more mothers, steal more babies, and push this species closer to extinction. We don’t want that to happen, and neither do you.
But your gift will protect a baby spider monkey in its forest home! And your gift will support all the work of Paso Pacífico. You’ll be a part of recovering many endangered species, like the yellow-naped Amazon parrots in Nicaragua. You’ll help our community rangers defend wildlife, put out forest fires, and stop illegal logging. You’ll also support the Junior Ranger education program, which teaches children to safeguard local animals such as the spider monkey.
Would you send a gift today to protect at least one baby spider monkey? Not only will you protect the baby and its mother, but you’ll be part of a group of generous donors restoring the unique beauty found only in Central America. One of them has even offered to match the first $10,000 donated this season to help baby monkeys. And you’ll make sure Paso Pacífico starts next year on the best possible financial footing.
But it all starts with protecting one baby spider monkey in its forest home.
This holiday season, there are spider monkeys that need your help. Please send in a special gift to protect one spider monkey in its forest home! Please donate here.
Thank you.