Welcome to Jennie of the Jungle!

Last August I took a group of dedicated wildlife lovers to work with ARCAS Rescue Center in Flores, Guatemala, and what an adventure it was! The JOJ Guatemala crew ARCAS is a sanctuary and rehabilitation center where orphaned and injured wildlife is taken in and nursed back to health or cared for until it is suitable for release back into the wild. Three of our JOJ members were new to traveling abroad, and new to working with animals, and so I had the immense pleasure of watching their eyes light up as they had the chance to connect with the rescue animals at the sanctuary. Cary and the macaws Macaws, parrots, toucans, peccaries, monkeys, and deer were just a few of the animals we had the opportunity to work with. We spent our days making diets for the animals, feeding them a mixture of fruits, veggies, and forest berries and leaves. We got to hang out with them as we cleaned their enclosures, and there is nothing that brings a smile to your face quite li...

Wow, where can I start? I just returned from a stint in the Peruvian Amazon. More specifically, in the Tambopata Research Center (TRC) situated in the Tambopata National Reserve on the upper Tambopata River in the center of a large uninhabited track of primary tropical lowland forest near the Bahuaja-Sonene National Park in the Madre de Dios Region of Peru. Whew! In short, it was beautiful and amazing, and the work I took part in was so important to the conservation of some of the most colorful and spirited birds on the planet. Proyecto Guacamayo, or the Tambopata Macaw Project, is based around a series of clay licks in the area (in fact, this area hosts the highest concentrations of avian clay licks in the world). The director of this project, Dr. Donald Brightsmith, has been working on this project for over 10 years. Dr. Brightsmith was my professor for a month-long tropical ecology field course in Costa Rica in 2000, and was a huge factor in getting me intere...