Laos / Tag 63-65

Hello everybody, today I had my second day in the new project. I am here at the Lao Zoo, which has been more than just a zoo for a few years now, but primarily a non-profit wildlife conservation project (Lao Conservation Trust for Wildlife). The Lao Zoo was taken over by an animal welfare organization about 5 years ago, as the zoo owners had no idea about the animals and did not provide them with the right food and kept them in cages that were far too small. Since the organization took over, a lot has changed. The zoo has been expanded and many of the animals already have larger and more appropriate enclosures. Unfortunately, not all of them yet, as there is a lot of work to do and there are also over 400 animals. Since the main source of income is still the zoo, it could not be closed so far. However, this is supposed to happen next year when all enclosures have been expanded and everything is ready. Then the project is mainly supposed to be funded through guided tours for tourists.

One of the main tasks is also to care for and reintroduce wildlife back into the wild. Unfortunately, not all animals can be released, as they have either been imprisoned for too long or have injuries that make it impossible for them to survive in the wild. But some animals can only be reintroduced as a pair and are still waiting for the right partner.

My main task in the project is to build enrichment activities for the animals that are kept alone here. That means we don't just give the animals their food, but hide it in objects that they have to figure out how to get out. This usually keeps them busy for a while and hopefully prevents them from getting bored too quickly. Since we wouldn't be able to do it daily for all the animals here in the zoo, all the other animals receive their food in a toy once a week.

Today we also renovated one of the smaller enclosures so that the Asiatic golden cat from next door can move in and we can connect her enclosure with the next one to create a larger one.

There are so many animals here and I could already tell you so much for two days that this blog post would probably be miles long. That's why I decided to write about 1-2 specific animals in every blog post. I want to start with the Asian palm civet (German: Ziebetkatze). Unfortunately, the palm civets are also endangered species. Here in the zoo we have 5 Asian palm civets. They don't really look like cats, more like oversized martens with a big, wide tail. The famous Kopi Luwak coffee is also made with them (more information about this in the photos).

The same genus also includes the binturongs. They are even larger than palm civets and very intelligent. On the first day, we also hid their food in toys and they quickly figured out how to get to it. I think we have a total of 10 binturongs. Two of them live with the bears in a large enclosure on a tree. By the way, if you get close to them, you can already smell their body odor and it smells like popcorn, super cool.

I really like the project here, especially because I see that the people here are very dedicated to improving the lives of the animals compared to before.

Curious to see what will happen here in the next three weeks.

I'll get back to you.

Until then,

Your Alex