Hi everyone. Let me start by saying the above is a satelite image of Tigre Salvaje Wildlife Refuge. First I want to give everyone some information on how I found this and then I'll get to why I need your help.
Well as everyone here knows, gas is going up, our economy is going down, and I feel it's time to GET OUT. I have been on a conquest the last few weeks searching for a home ANYWHERE basically below where we live, and not too far below the equator, that's inexpensive, plenty of land in order to make life for myself and family self sustaining. I was considering properties Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico (as many of you know I already wanted to retire there anyway). Until I found this one!
This is the road to the property, and Tigre Salvaje, located in Punta Burica, Panama. That's the Pacific on the left side of the picture.
This is the house that I'm considering purchasing. Yes, those are bananas!
I knew immediately that I needed to look into this more, and more, and more, and more. All I found was myself there already. It had always been my dream to get my degree and work in the wilderness as a field researcher for the CDC. Well that dream came to a crash when I got sick from internal bleeding (cause still unknown) many years ago and I was forced to drop out of school. When I came upon this, while not the same thing, it's along the same lines and my dreams and goals started to come back to me!
As I read, I learned a lot of horrible things are going on here. To start there are pochers killing off a lot of the animals, and a lot of the land in this area was cleared to build a light house and for pig farmers (further inland). Many of the animals that once inhabited this area are gone. Others are highly endangered.
[picture here removed by a moderator for an unknown reason, pm if you would like to see the picture]
This monkey was killed to confinscate her baby to sell on the streets from $6-25.
This baby monkey was confinscated from a pocher going to sell it.
[picture here removed by a moderator for an unknown reason, pm if you would like to see the picture]
This monkey was killed only for eating a cocoanut!
The monkeys are losing their forests! There are three species there. Mothers are being killed for their childred so they can be sold on the streets. Hunters from the pig farms also lay and await monkeys trying to eat their cocoanuts, which is grown to feed their pigs. The monkeys are out of food resources from the deforestation and have learned and addapted to open cocoanuts in order to eat.
Conchs are highly endangered here as well. Pochers capture them, crack off their shells on the beaches, leave the sharp broken shells and take the conch's to sell.
Sea Turtles here are also endangered. Pochers also catch the turtles to sell for food, and their dogs end up eating their eggs.
Waters are poluted in order to quickly harvest shrimp, thus birds and wildlife are eating from the poluted water and getting sick and dying.
Their goal is to plant many of the indigenous plants and fruit trees in a reforest effort as well as to rehabilitate animals that were confinscated for made sick due to man. They have been harvesting eggs before pochers dogs can get to them and incubating them. They're going to be just short of their goal of releasing 2000 turtle eggs since the project began in 2004. They take in wild animals that were taken by pochers and nurse them back to health and reintroduce them into the wild or nurse the babies into adulthood and teach them how to live on their own. They provide bird houses for birds that have lost their homes due to deforestation or pochers taking their nests and babies in order to sell them. They protect the land from the pochers as best as possible.
Right now their project is under threat. The government, shortly after they began the project, decided to deem the land for tourism and told them they had two options, build a hotel, or have the land sold out from under them. I personally find this interesting that the government of Panama would consider this as I believe the nearest international airport is over 4-5 hours away, the only way to currently get there is by seaside during low tide, an hour drive this way, and the beaches there are very rocky. They solved this problem 3 years ago by building a few buildings and renting them out. Mostly they go to students for only $25 a night ($50 for anyone else that isn't helping with the project), and this includes 3 meals a day (what a deal). While this appeased the government, now it's under threat due to finances.
I've already decided regardless of what's going to happen, I'm going to set up a non-profit organization to help them with finances, but my ultimate goal is to move down there myself. My partner and I really want to personally be apart of this project first hand! I also am trying to plan a trip down there in the next month or two. All of these things costs money... which I really don't have at the moment. Granted, I'll have the money to purchase the house when I sell my own, but still need finances for plane tickets and to set up the non-profit organization. If anyone is able to help at all to save these animals and the forests, even if it's just $1, please contact me! Any donations will be tax deductable (I'll give you a receipt for it) and when I do move down there (as you can tell what time I'm posting this, I couldn't sleep I'm already excited!) there will always be a room for you to stay in! Even if it's just a word of encouragement and thoughts and prayers (am I allowed to say that here?). It all counts!
Thanks,
Josh
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