The 4 weeks I spent at Alouatta Sanctuary were interesting to say the least. Like most other interns there, I found I was not the only one who had come into this experience excited to do research and help rehabilitate infant howler monkeys. It was the only volunteer program that would allow me to actually handle these monkeys with the very limited primate experience I had. My interview with Seth Hopkins went very well, I had thought. It lasted far longer than the time I was told it would take, which to me meant that I was dealing with an owner who really put his time and effort into picking the right people to come and work with the Sanctuary. I remember going over the internship packet information in detail and explaining the research projects I was interested in. Never once during that conversation was I led to believe that there were no current research projects taking place at the Sanctuary and it would be my responsibility to start one if I wanted to do any research during my stay. I also specifically remember being told that transportation to and from the airport was something guaranteed to me and something I didn't have to worry about. Seth Hopkins was very charming, and I even came out of the interview thinking that he smiled a lot and seemed like a really great guy. It was very exciting, but everything changed for me as soon as I arrived at the airport in David. Before my first flight around 3 am, I made sure that I emailed Seth Hopkins with a reminder that I was coming in to Panama that night. Four flights and 18 hours later, I did not have a reply to my email. I tried using the pay phone to call all of the phone numbers given to me in case of an emergency and none of them were answered. I knew that since no one had replied to my email that no one was coming for me. I waited about an hour and hitched a ride with a local man that knew Seth by name and offered me a ride. Obviously, this was a moment of desperation for me. I knew this was a risky choice, so before I left with this guy, I emailed Seth Hopkins and explained what was going on. Trying to find the location of the Sanctuary was very difficult, but I managed to arrive in one piece, thanks to the friendly local. When I arrived, I found out that our camp didn't have internet for the last few days, due to Seth not actively putting more data onto the portable wifi, and no one was informed of my arrival until a few hours after I had landed and my email was finally viewed by Jolie Colby (who lives in California). The acting manager apologized profusely and made me feel a little better about the situation. It was also explained to me, later on, that the arriving interns usually wait between 2-6 hours to be picked up from the airport, due to Seth's lack of organization and care. I finally met Seth Hopkins a day or two after arriving at the Sanctuary. I was told that I would be refunded for the money I paid the local to drive me, and that he didn't know why his "driver" wasn't able to pick me up. I was shocked he didn't offer an apology for neither being there to pick me up, nor his lack of organization, but the most upsetting thing was that I got a completely different explanation about what had happened in an email from Jolie Colby. The rest of my experience just being around Seth was very difficult. I soon found out that he was very hard to approach with concerns about anything regarding the Sanctuary. For the most part, Seth was never around, which was very nice, however, Seth's lack of commitment to deadlines and plans that he made posed even more problems. He was supposed to being us food twice a week and would often show up a few days late with produce from a list that was not updated. While I was away on vacation I was told that the propane for the stove top burner ran out and wasn't replaced for a few days. On top of this, the produce we had for ourselves was shared with the monkeys, and during my stay there I witnessed the food supply get so low and we could not possibly give them the diverse diet they were intended to get. Seth was often late to our weekly meetings as well. This is a time we are supposed to come together as a group, think of ideas to better the monkeys in any way, bring up concerns and make suggestions. Unfortunately, that is not the way group meetings worked. During the first few meetings I attended people hinted towards some concerns and suggestions, but Seth quickly and rather dominantly brushed them aside. I personally had come up with an alarming amount of concerns about the size of the enclosures, the necessity for a quarantine enclosure, the amount of excessive handling, the necessity for enrichment, the sitting with and petting of monkeys being called "enrichment", and the inaccurate diet information for the monkeys. Never once did I feel comfortable enough to address these issues with Seth. I was told, if I did, it wouldn't end well. Based on the stories of interns getting fired for asking too many questions and having too many concerns, I felt it wasn't my place to bring any of it up. It took me 2 days of shifts to realize that there were several problems with the way Seth ran his "Conversation" program. By week 2 some of the other interns were coming towards the end of their stay and decided it might be time to converse with Seth about some of the disappointments they experienced while at the Sanctuary. Seth was told that some people felt misled during their interviews about the lack of research and that if there is no research going on at the time that they should have been informed, rather than made to feel like there were a few different research projects going on that they could choose from and participate in. They also addressed how Seth didn't always make himself approachable and that's why these concerns weren't brought up sooner. We also addressed our concerns for the only means of transportation, Seth's truck, being with him while he disappears into the city for days at a time, and that if there were an emergency we would want to be able to get to a hospital quickly enough. We were all surprised that Seth was about to keep his cool and address our concerns with a respectable manner. At this point I had never witnessed an outburst by Seth but I had been told he could be very aggressive and domineering. This all had changed by the next morning when we were all aggressively woken up by Seth's "emergency meeting" at 6 am. So much for the prior night's meeting going well. For almost 2 hours we listened to Seth yell at us for being "worthless consumer's", "soft" and "selfish" "manipulators", trying to "get every penny out of our dollar" by wanting to be involved in the research that we were told was going on at the Sanctuary. We were told to "fucking quit" and that he could hire locals to take our places. We were made to feel worthless and selfish. On two occasions I walked away from the meeting because I couldn't believe what he was saying to us. At one point, I couldn't hold my tongue and I told Seth he was acting like an "asshole". He later admitted to me that I was right, but he would fire me if I didn't apologize about my comment in front of the whole group because even though he was acting like an asshole, it was not my place to say and I shouldn't get away with calling him out in front of everyone else. During my meeting with him about whether or not I could stay at the Sanctuary based on my comments, I tried, for 2 hours, to speak cordially with him and address my concerns, all while trying to figure out if he deserved an apology and if I should or should not stay. During this talk, most of my comments and concerns were deflected and manipulated back onto me. Thankfully, I recorded this conversation in its entirety (part 1, 2, 3, 4) in the hopes of catching the way he berated us the day before, but Seth, for the most part, had kept his cool. At the end of our talk I decided to apologize and stay because we were so understaffed at that point it would have been more selfish to leave, and I wanted to see this experience through. However, upon listening to the recording over again some time later, I realize that Seth is what is wrong with conservation and I should not keep my mouth shut about him and how he "runs" his Sanctuary. I will never recommend anyone to visit or intern at the Sanctuary. It is not a successful rehabilitation center. There are two dogs which are dirty who like to follow you up into the jungle and try to play with the monkeys (and the monkeys will try to play back), and this is very detrimental to the survival of the monkeys since poachers tend to use dogs to help find the monkeys in the wild (as of March 14, 2016 there are three dogs). The dogs will also sleep in your bed while you are gone and are full of ticks and fleas. One of the dogs is slightly aggressive as well. There was a cat at the Sanctuary who we tried to have brought to the vet for 3 weeks or more before Seth brought him in. He was skin and bones, had trouble walking and eating, and it's nails were growing into the pads on his feet. The pillows they have to sleep with are full of mold and need to be thrown away. Rain continuously floods the sleeping area because the mesh walls covered with a piece of plastic that is not tied down tends to blow up in the wind and allows the rain to get inside. The spider monkey needs to be rehomed in an area where there are wild spider monkeys, and not kept in a small enclosure where she will become more and more aggressive. Zita, the capuchin, had a terrible skin condition while I was there which took weeks to even try to treat. She was not even brought to the vet, but someone was made to take pictures which the vet apparently looked at and determined a diagnosis from. However, the medicine worked only temporarily and her condition soon worsened. The howler monkey enclosure needs to be deeper into the forest so that handling time is minimized because it's clear they'd rather take a nap on you and rely on you for food than they would like to explore the canopy. Despite all of these problems, I do have great memories from my time spent at the Sanctuary. All of the other interns got along great and did the most they could do for these monkeys. It was hard to want to stay and work for someone who didn't appreciate you and didn't take conservation seriously, but choosing to leave the Sanctuary early would have been a huge burden on the few interns who were there and would ultimately affect the well-being of all of the primates. It is unfortunate that it seems like Alouatta Sanctuary may be the most equipped place to handle all of these primates in this area of Panama, because it most definitely is not up to par with being a successful rehabilitation and research center. It is more or less a complete scam, with these wonderful primates being used as bait. Submitted from the USA on 4/27/2016.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWe are scientists, conservationists, ecologists. We are concerned citizens of the world. ArchivesCategories |