This Woman in Suriname Has Rescued More than 1,000 Sloths
By Ellyn Kail on February 15, 2021
Monique Pool weighs and photographs a rescue sloth named Ostrich at her rehabilitation center in Saramacca, Suriname. Ostrich received her name because as a baby she was found hanging out near the ostriches at the zoo in Paramaribo separated from her mother.
Pool’s efforts in conservation and sloth rescue are a combination of being self-taught and reaching out for help to sloth specialists in Brazil and Costa Rica.
Before he traveled to Suriname, the photojournalist Justin Mott had never seen a sloth in person. He had first heard about the country’s sloths in the aftermath of 2012’s “Slothageddon,” a large deforestation event near Paramaribo, when a friend from the German animal welfare organization WTG told him about Monique Pool, a woman who had rescued 135 displaced sloths in the area.