Amazon Animal Orphanage & Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm

December 2011: We’ve just added a news blog to our site. We receive many eMails and comments from supporters. Now we have a place so that we can easily hear from you. We will be moving earlier news to these pages in the next few weeks.

HAPPY NEW YEAR . . . and please visit us in Iquitos during the New Year! Iquitos is situated near the confluence of the Nanay and Amazon rivers. Our butterfly farm and Animal Orphanage are on the banks of the Nanay River.

More and more tourists think they are helping exotic animals by buying them from a random person on the street who claims to have “found it abandoned in the jungle.” While tourists mean well, purchasing such an animal anywhere in the world exacerbates the problem by creating a black market.

No animals leave offspring before they are able to survive on their own. Every animal being sold on the street is there because its parent was killed, perhaps by the person trying to sell it! And every animal being sold on the street is in ill health.

Should you purchase such an animal, albeit well-meaning, you are actually giving the seller a reason to kill another parent in order to sell its offspring, and you are putting yourself in jeopardy because the purchase of an exotic creature is illegal in all countries.

If the animals are lucky, they are brought to a center such as the Amazon Animal Orphanage. But that will not stop the problem. Only you can help stop this problem. Do not buy animals from street vendors. Report them to local authorities.

Please, before visiting open habitats, read National Geographic or watch Animal Planet, both of which caution against purchasing exotic creatures and both of which provide information about the illegality of purchasing exotic animals.

Welcome to The Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm. The Amazon is profuse with many varieties of butterfly on show, including the highly colored and delicate Longwings and other Heliconids Swallowtails (papilios) Peirids Caligos (owl butterflies).

The Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm is the only butterfly farm in Peru – and the farm is included on select guided tours. Butterfly farms in tropical rainforest areas are increasingly becoming another important factor contributing to a greater understanding of rainforests and their conservation.

More than 40 species of the most colorful (and least dangerous) insects of the Amazon thrive at Pilpintuwasi. Visitors learn about the problems with finding a host plant for each caterpillar, the life cycle of butterflies, problems with predators, etc.

more than 40 species

At Pilpintuwasi, you will see the rearing of the giant blue Morphos (image above), Helicons, Owl Moths, Swallow tails and many others. Visitors to Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm in Iquitos are able to see the complete life cycle, and learn about the impressive development of butterflies.

Iquitos is situated near the confluence of the Nanay and Amazon rivers. Our butterfly farm and Animal Orphanage are on the banks of the Nanay River.

As we love nature, and are conscious of the threats to flora and fauna, we hope that our efforts will enable our visitors to increase interest in and love of our natural world and help with conservation efforts.

We got three new animals since I last wrote to you: An adult marmoset who was confiscated in the port of Iquitos, another three-toed sloth baby who was confiscated on the street, and an adult three-toed sloth.

The adult sloth was dropped at my veterinarian’s by a lodge owner. He had taken the animal out of its habitat and hung it near the bungalows of his lodge as an extra attraction, but I don’t know what he hung the animal on. It fell and broke its hip and its right arm. My veterinarian first thought the animal would die, but after having survived a week on pure saline solution, the animal started to have an appetite; its food is only leaves of the Cecropia tree, which are not so easy to find in town.

The vet told me he called the lodge owner to tell him that he should take the anmal back to his lodge and take care of it. But that irresponsible lodge owner (believe me I wrote another word first!) told him he wouldn’t take care of a sick animal and it should be euthanized.

Dr Miguel, my vet, is an animal lover too; he told me the story and asked me to take care of the sloth. As this animal needs to be taken care of for at least another two months, I accepted. It’s a male, and now he seems to have understood that we only want to help him, and doesn’t try to bite anymore, so we also gave him a name: Beto. He has to stay in quarantine with a pillow between his legs and he made himself comfortable half hanging on a thick branch. He is eating well, and is the other little sloth and the monkey.

I also wanted to thank you for all the other ideas to help Pilpintuwasi such as the airline tickets etc. It will help if people purchase their airline tickets through that link! We could really use the help to feed the animals and for medicine. I have asked a Peruvian friend who lives in Lima to find out there about PayPal or any other way to be able to get donations.

I hope everyone had happy and peaceful holidays. I spent them like any other day, but in the evening I celebrated with good sweets and new books also from Austria.

Fortunately all the animals are fine. Even Beto seems to be getting better. All I want for the new Year is health for all of us, including you(r) and my family, and more visitors and volunteers for 2012.

Gudrun gets to town every couple of weeks to update all of us. She doesn’t have Internet at Pilpintuwasi. We are trying now to catch up with all the news From Pilpintuwasi and the Amazon Animal Orphanage and hope it will be easier now that we’ve added a blog to the site.

When she gets visits town on Tuesday and Friday and has to fit in shopping, paperwork with the ecological police or the institute of natural resources, take care of medicinal needs for the animals, try to send an update for the Web site, etc.

November-December, 2011:

I don’t know if people can still imagine how it is to live without the Internet . . . we only have access twice a week, mostly to answer emails of my family or correspond with interested volunteers.

There are quite a few new faces at Pilpintuwasi. Here are a few pictures of the newcomers.

Lucy, a two-toed sloth, was sent to Pilpintuwasi by an organisation called “Unidos por los animales (UPA)” who were contacted by a lady that had found the animal on a roof in one of the slums of Lima.

Unfortunately an American zoo is desperately trying to get some red Uakaris for their exhibition and have been paying hunters in the Amazon to kill female adult monkeys so they could get hold of their babies. We managed to get four of those babies from the ecological police and they are being spoiled by the other monkeys — who partly adopted them — and by the staff of Pilpintuwasi.

The second picture shows Lisa, one of the new red Uakaris, who’s about nine months old. My big male Uakaris are now adult and unfortunately very jealous and territorial, so we had to build a cage for them. They are still very friendly and extremely nice to women, but they want to be the only males at Pilpintuwasi, and after we had some problems — a guide was bitten by Nico — we decided to keep them in a cage from Tuesday to Sunday. Their only day off now is Monday, and that’s a big headache for all.

We would like to reproduce the red Uakaris as there is almost nothing known about them and they are in danger of extinction. To be able to protect both visitors and monkeys I have a new dream, but it would take a considerable amount of money to do it. I’m thinking of building a wire mesh tunnel all over the walkway at Pilpintuwasi so people can go around inside that tunnel and see the animals acting normally in their natural habitat. Maybe it’s a crazy idea, but I don’t see another solution.

(Editor’s Note: This is a logical solution and is utilized around the world in varying degrees. Xcaret on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula is practicing a version of this type of environmental care with various endangered species, including Sea Turtles.)

The third picture shows Juanita, one of our two coaties and we have Negrita a Sakimonkey who was dropped by ecologica police and now has a broken leg. (She is one of three Saki monkeys at Pilpintuwasi, along with Florian, the young adult male.)

During this year we had some very nice volunteers who helped me a lot and I would like to thank them here:

• Anne Kathrin from Germany
• Shawna from Canada
• Katie from Australia who, as a trained zookeeper taught us a lot about enrichment
• Geert and Heidi from Belgium
• Louise, Robin, Miriam, Carola and another very nice Italian woman
• I also want to say thank you for the donations from Mrs Demeter Kraanj and from Ms. Irene from Poland
• I have been talking to Molly the founder of Amazon CARES , who has just been in Iquitos for a few weeks, but was very busy, and she promised me to send the donations next week.

Love from all of us
~ Gudrun

There are a few important things I wanted everyone to know before I update with our new babies . . .

Thanks to Amazon Cares NGO, I recently received 145U$ donation — it took some time, but finally we recieved the money.

The Baby Ocelot

We also got a little ocelot in March. First it weighed less than a kilo; now Harry—that’s her name— weighs 5kgs . . . that’s a picture of her on top of the page.

A Reminder: Please do not buy baby animals; the black market has to be stopped and won’t be as long as people can sell these orphaned animals to unsuspecting tourists. (The sellers generally have killed the parents of the animals; parents do not abandon their animals in the wild.)

Rosita, the Anteater

We got a new anteater— again the mother was hunted and eaten, and the baby left at Pilpintuwasi — with a bullet wound. She’s also named Rosita. Her caretaker —a boy from the village— carries her around and looks for ant nests for her). The vet cured her bullet wound. Rosita has been a month with me—she’s still very small, weighs 4kgs she needs extra proteins, similar to those used by a bodybuilder. It is more expensive to feed her right now than the jaguar as she consumes weekly three jars of powdered milk without lactosis, needs daily vitamin K and the proteins. Cross all your fingers please that she gets big and strong.

Last week I also got two baby sloths from some people who had killed the mothers to eat them.

Chavo is fortunately still with us, but we have not yet found a medication that really helps with her epileptic seizures. Some veterinarians recommended  Pottasium Bromide, but Istill don’t have the exact information about how to use that drug, so she’s still on Fenitoina—but has many seizures. It’s almost a miracle that she’s still so nice and good natured.

Toni the pickpocket had to be put into jail. She started to get really aggressive with human females, bit a few girls, and finally we had to put her in a cage, together with Junior, the black cappuchin, who started to bite children. Both of them now have company—a little white-fronted cappuchin who was dropped at the farm by a tourist, who had bough ther on the way to Iquitos in one of the boats.

Tony adopted the baby and all of them are fine.

Best wishes and all my love,

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