Volunteering - Animal Rescue Centres

The less developed and poorer countries we'll be visting have a plethora of opportunities for volunteering – Ecuador and Bolivia for example. We’re going to be focusing on volunteering at animal rescue and rehabilitation centres, we both adore animals and I've always had a deep desire to work with them and help them.

Due to poverty (and a whole host of other contributing factors) people are being driven to selling illegal and endangered animals on the black market. Don’t get me wrong, I believe there is no excuse for it, but these people are often desperate to even feed themselves and they see selling animals as an accessible trade, often selling to rich tourists or overseas buyers, even selling the animals to become parts :(

You can read more about the illegal animal trade in Peru here.

It is also really important to note that each case of animal trafficking is different and has it's own individual story. In my next post I will be putting up a video link to the latest Unreported World documentary about animal trafficking, you can witness for yourself that not all cases arise from desperation. Many also arise from greed.

One of the projects we plan to spend time volunteering with is Merazonia, 'an up-and-coming rescue centre for trafficked and abused Amazonian animals' in Ecuador. While we're there we hope to understand the situation more and to learn about the actions being taken to put a stop to it, and be a part of that.

A lot of these creatures end up in rescue centres, either brought there after being seized by officials or brought to the centres by the people that purchased them, often finding they don’t actually know how to care for them or finding the animal in poor health. Unfortunately for these creatures it’s not just a case of rescuing the ones that find themselves being sold as soulless products on the markets, but it’s about the BIGGER PICTURE. There are so many more trickier to tackle factors that make up the causes of why this is happening.
Deforestation is playing a HUGE factor in animal endangerment in the regions we’ll be visiting. I’ll talk more about this in a later post.