Photo: Noah Friedman-Rudovsky for The New York Times
AMBUE ARI, Bolivia — The mosquitoes descend so ferociously that residents simply call them “the plague.” Piranhas patrol rivers. Caimans rest in ponds. Then there are the monkeys
But the foreigners who make their way to the Ambue Ari animal reserve come here for the big cats. More than two dozen live here in cages, including jaguars, pumas and ocelots. Visitors can walk these beasts around the jungle on a leash.
The place attracts an eclectic mix. In January’s rainy season, the visitors numbered 16 people, including a Canadian carpenter, a Swedish security guard, a British student and an Australian environmental consultant.
Each pays $10 a day. Ambue Ari has no telephone, no television, no Internet, no air-conditioning, no flush toilets. For those worried about risks involved with big cats, a veterinarian, Zandro Vargas, is on duty. He applies stitches to people, too.
Ambue Ari, legendary in hostels up and down South America’s backpacking circuit, has found itself at the center of a controversy among animal welfare officials and big cat experts for allowing visitors such intimate contact with predators that are both dangerous and endangered.
Animal welfare officials, aware of the risks jaguars pose to the visiting volunteers, want Ambue Ari to stop allowing jaguars out for walks. “We asked them during an inspection to stop this practice,” said David Kopp, an official in the Vice Ministry of Biodiversity in the capital, La Paz. "Ambue Ari serves an important role in caring for rescued jaguars that overpopulated zoos can not accept. Authorities have to remain flexible until new safety measures overseeing the handling of big cats can be put into effect."
Ambue Ari’s directors say they are devoted to the animals in their care, some of which are rescued from captivity.
“Our cats live with more dignity than those in any zoo,” said Tania Baltazar, 37, the president of Inti Wara Yassi, the nonprofit group that manages Ambue Ari and two other refuges in Bolivia. "No one at Ambue Ari, which sprawls over 1,991 acres of forest, has been killed by the cats since the refuge was created in 2002. However, some nonfatal injuries are an inevitable result of such close interaction with big cats. “Scars are nature’s tattoos,” said Ms. Baltazar, showing a few of her own.
Jaguars, that can weigh about 250 pounds, are capable of killing cattle and horses.
“Relative to their weight, jaguars have the most powerful bite of all cats,” said Rafael Hoogesteijn, a Venezuelan veterinarian who works in Brazil for Panthera, an organization that promotes conservation of large cats. He called the methods used at Ambue Ari “an invitation to disaster.”
Others seemed to agree. “Would I want to wander around the forest with a jaguar on a leash? Well, no!” said Stuart Pimm, an ecologist at Duke University who serves on National Geographic’s big cats initiative, a program to find ways to prevent jaguars and other cats from becoming extinct. “Because there’s no doubt a jaguar can finish you off in a few seconds.”
“I’m from Connecticut,” said Ryan Lewis, 31, who came here after serving in the United States Army in Iraq and working as a trader of recycled metals in Toronto. “I was searching for something to do which was really different.”
Robert Thoren, 27, a mountain climber from Los Angeles, arrived here for a brief stay after a bout with pneumonia while backpacking near Lake Titicaca. He ended up staying four years and now oversees construction at Ambue Ari and the group’s two other sites. “It’s no more dangerous to volunteer here than in the Sudan,” he said.
The conditions at Ambue Ari are hard. Before donning masks of mosquito netting and grasping machetes to cut through the bush, volunteers gather at breakfast for a chant of “Inti Wara Yassi!” — or “Sun, Moon, Stars!” in three Bolivian indigenous languages. Then they venture into the jungle.
Staff members say the rainy season, with its mosquito swarms, attracts the toughest volunteers. They share fungal medication and sweat through a climate that feels like a 24-hour sauna. Some battle parasites Many lose weight,
“I heard of this place by word of mouth,” said Camilla Nasholm, 22, a Swedish volunteer. “It’s been wonderful so far.”
Some, like Roy Argue, 45, a Canadian volunteer, posted these lines on his blog: “A monkey peed on all my clothes; ’cause someone left my door someone open. Stung over and over by fire ants; A scorpion crawled inside my pants; What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Where there are mosquitoes there is life,” said Ms. Baltazar, the president of Inti Wara Yassi, explaining why repellent was banned here: because the cats don’t like it and out of respect for the insects themselves. “The creatures in our care come first.”
adapted from TheNewYork Times - Article by Simon Romero
