Care for AWARE's Ambassador Animals

Hi AWARE/GlobalGiving Donors,

Your donations to AWARE through GlobalGiving have continued to make it possible for us to save lives, improve the quality of life of our ambassadors, and educate ever more people about the importance of peaceful coexistence with our wild neighbors.  Here are some highlights from the last few months!

- Over the winter, we took in a young ball python that had been stuck in shoebox when his owner went to college and left him behind. For two months, he was forgotten- no food, no water, no light, just solitary confinement. When the owner's parents finally opened the shoebox and saw him one day, he had shrunk to the point that we could see the outline of his skeleton poking through his scales.

Your donations made it possible for us to accept young Andrew Snecklace (our name for him) as our newest ambassador. Though we don't normally take non-native species as ambassadors, we have long wanted a non-native species that we could allow children to touch, and Andrew was in such desperate need that we very much wanted to help him out. Fortunately, he has quickly regained his health and strength in our care. Today, he's muscular, active, and attending school programs to help teach kids about wildlife several times a week.

- We also use your donations for small projects to improve the quality of life of our ambassadors. For example, with a few extra dollars from your donations to spend on materials, a volunteer was able to build a new ramp/runway for our ambassador skunks, Marc Anthony and Cleopatra. Cleo in particular has really taken to the new structure, and regularly runs up the ramp to curl up in the house at the top in the daytime before running down again for dinner.

- And in a larger sense, your donations have helped us expand our capacity to deliver educational content to schools and other groups this year. We're currently at about a 40% increase over last year's program delivery, meaning we've been able to teach 40% more people how to make the world a safer place for the wildlife with whom we share our world. 

So thank you for continuing to support our Ambassador Care project! We look forward to continuing to build on the foundation you are all laying for us in the days and months to come!