Inside Liberty: Saving circus animals in Guatemala

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Please save the date – December 10th. ADI’s Jan and Tim will be in Los Angeles for a very special screening ‘Inside Liberty’, the inside story of ADI’s Operation Liberty, the 18-month mission emptying Guatemala’s circus cages.

After rescuing all the circus animals in Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia, we arrived in Guatemala to set up camp and help enforce the ban on animals in circuses. It turned into a grueling 18 months with raids on circuses, fierce negotiations, threats, confrontations, lawsuits, water shortages, an emergency evacuation of the big cats, and an airlift of tigers and lions that took us through 5 countries on 3 continents to get them home.

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Animals need special care

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The injuries inflicted on circus survivors like Lupe, Sasha lioness, and Simba can follow them for life and they need special care at the ADI Wildlife Sanctuary.

Tigress Lupe suffers seizures due to malnutrition and inbreeding in a circus in Guatemala. Our team gives her medications each day, and she is monitored in case of any problems.

Sasha suffered a brutal declawing operation in a Guatemalan circus, which led to cancer and spreading up her leg. In our care, she had ground-breaking surgery removing diseased bone and replacing it with a titanium implant. She is now pain free but years painfully limping in the circus saw her tendons shorten and now our team’s priority these days is giving Sasha physiotherapy with different toys and treats encouraging her to use her titanium leg.

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Help care for those who care for our animals

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Come rain or shine, heat or cold, our dedicated ADI Wildlife Sanctuary team are always there to tend to our rescued animals’ needs. They give our residents their food and medications, create the fun enrichment you see them enjoy, fight fires to keep them (and the community) safe, and more.

When we share images and videos of our big cats looking peaceful, happy, and content, it’s a testament to the hard work of our team. And we hope, with your help, we can now say ‘thank you’ for all they do.

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Upcycled enrichment is a win-win

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ReyA is clearly enjoying his hay-filled coffee bag enrichment at the ADI Wildlife Sanctuary. Our thanks to Highland Coffee Roastery for donating their empty coffee bags so that we can turn them into giant enrichment bags filled with hay and various scents the lions and tigers love. Although they have huge enclosures where they can chase, play, stalk the local wildlife, this kind of enrichment adds extra interest and variety and maintains their relationships with their carers. Remember how much fun they had with their Halloween pumpkins? You can still sponsor a pumpkin today, and part of it will go towards a day’s care for a lion or tiger. Let’s see if we can give them more pumpkins throughout the rest of the year. Sponsor a pumpkin

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Save the Date: GivingTuesday, November 28

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Since the ADI Wildlife Sanctuary was founded in 2018, our efforts have gone into providing state-of-the-art facilities for the animals – from huge habitats fed with spring water, to night houses, food storage, security fencing, and guards. This GivingTuesday, we hope you can help us to care for our staff who care for our rescued residents seven days a week to provide food, medications, love, respect, and protection.

Please show our carers how much you appreciate them by helping us to complete their Staff Village to make living on the Sanctuary easier. This is a gift to the animals, too, because they need our team to be at the top of their game every day.

Those of you who follow our Facebook lives will know our team, but what you may not know is that they have been temporarily camped in an old farmhouse. They deserve a comfortable place to retreat after a long, hard day.

You can also start your own GivingTuesday Facebook fundraiser here.

House swap

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‘Spice Girls’ Jade, Luna, Sun, and Moon are given access to an empty habitat twice a week for enrichment at the ADI Wildlife Sanctuary, South Africa. The ADIWS Resident Welfare Team is always coming up with new ways to enrich the lives of our rescued lions and tigers, and this is just one example. The sisters like to explore every inch of the empty habitat, especially playful Jade who has great fun bouncing around.

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Bonding with Coco and Chino

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Our ADI Wildlife Sanctuary Resident Welfare Team (RWT) continues to spend time each week with our rescued lions and tigers. Here, Ernest sits with brothers Coco and Chino, rescued from a circus in Peru – their friend Kesari can be seen in the background. Bonding time is part of our work to build trust with our big cat residents. This helps us to better care for them, especially when there are medical issues.

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Good morning from Leo

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The sun is up and elderly Leo greets the day. Officially Leo is 21 years old in January, although many of us suspect he was much older than eleven when ADI rescued him from a circus in Peru. However old he is, he is the father of our pride and the most senior lion at the ADI Wildlife Sanctuary. These days, Leo is showing his age and like many elderly cats getting thinner, so each day the ADIWS team hand feed him with tongs to ensure he gets all of his food, medications and supplements. He sleeps nesting in hay in his house or one of his platform dens – note the bits of hay in his mane in this picture – and in the mornings potters out into the 3.75 acre (152,460sqft) Abbey Habitat. He’s currently enjoying the warm Spring weather and sunshine and usually settles by or under the trees but is still found occasionally at the far end of the habitat. We’ve added extra water points to the habitat so that he always has water nearby and if we see a big rain storm coming we will bring Leo inside to keep him dry. It’s all a long, long way from that small, bare circus cage he once lived in. Welcome to another day in paradise Leo.