Amid Mexico’s heatwave and drought, suffering birds are being air-conditioned and heatstroke-affected monkeys are being rescued by non-governmental groups.
The government, meanwhile, has been more concerned with cooling animals in public zoos. across the country (please check if this is correct), feeding the lions frozen meat lollipops. It’s not the only frozen treat: A rescue group is feeding distressed owls with rat carcasses. shipped frozen from Mexico. (The addition you see in the first sentence is for “shipped frozen from Mexico” in the following.)
A thermal dome, an area of high pressure centered over the southern Gulf of Mexico and northern Central America, prevented cloud formation and caused significant sunshine and warm temperatures across Mexico and the United States. -United.
Much of the impact on wildlife is felt in central and southern Mexico, because although temperatures are also high in the north, it is primarily a desert and animals have coping mechanisms there to extreme heat and drought.
On the steamy Gulf Coast, a wildlife park has set up air-conditioned rooms for eagles, owls and other birds of prey.
In the south, howler monkeys continue to fall dead from trees due to heatstroke. Deaths are now expected to exceed 250.
In the southern state of Tabasco, the few monkeys that can be saved from dehydration and heatstroke are mostly saved by NGOs like the Usumacinta biodiversity conservation group. Known by its initials COBIUS, the group rescued and stabilized 18 monkeys.
Wildlife biologist Gilberto Pozo, who leads the group, accompanies teams of biologists and veterinarians into the jungle in search of sick monkeys.
Often they arrive too late. “Yesterday we lost three animals,” Pozo said as he bounced in a truck along a rural road in the southern Gulf coast state of Tabasco, the worst-hit region. “We went out to rescue them. We couldn’t stabilize them.
The monkeys – medium-sized primates known for their roaring cries – were too far gone with some sort of severe fluid loss as Mexico grapples with drought and heat.
As of May 31, the Ministry of Environment acknowledged that a total of 204 howler monkeys had died, including 157 in Tabasco. Pozo said that number in Tabasco alone has since risen to 198, suggesting the nationwide toll is now close to 250.
“The only rescue plan or program is the one our organization implements,” Pozo said. Faced with budget cuts by many environmental agencies, the government must now rely on NGOs.
