By Matt Barnes | Centre Co Manager
2026 has started with a bang as we open a new chapter here at ACES full of hope and optimism. We welcomed Matt and Niamh from the UK and Ireland respectively to the team as new Co-Managers who will be running the day to day of the organization ranging from animal emergencies and husbandry to campaigning, fundraising, construction, development, people engagement, education and citizen science which keeps them busy!
Educational Experiences and facility upgrades:
We have shuffled around our operation to form a more sustainable non-profit structure and the new team have invested heavily in improving people engagement and education through twice daily tours. The tours have been extremely successful and well received with around 1,600 visitors since mid-January! The educational tours have given some fundraising respite whilst the team buy the necessary materials to tackle refurbishing the clinic, the new visitor/info centre and the non-predator unit which has made a huge difference to the animal admissions flow and patient comfort levels.
Community outreach and citizen science:
Our team have also embarked on an ambitious plan to help clean and quantify marine pollution here on Ambergris Caye. Marine pollution levels on the island are at plague proportions and the devastating consequences that arise from marine litter entanglement and ingestion are more prevalent than ever. Our team are now completing a minimum of one coastal clean up per month and quantifying marine litter levels used it a stratified survey methodology which will help us in future campaigns to help rid the Cayes of single use plastics.
Remote Species Research:
To help document presence, absence and abundance of wild animal populations here on Ambergris Caye we have began to deploy remote trail cameras. These help us to see if elusive animals are present and also threats they may face through anthropogenic pressure such as illegal hunting. So far, our video captures have included Jaguar, Ocelot, White Tailed Deer and Grey Fox!
By the numbers:
In our first few months this year we have responded to 93 hotline calls and took in 52 patients from over 25 species!
These have largely been anthropogenic in cause ranging from window strikes to entanglement, habituation, disturbance and illegal pets. Notably, we have gained one new resident crocodile named Brigitte after one of our long term supporters Brigitte Bargot who sadly passed away last year. Brigitte the crcocodile, is a female American croc who is fully blind an we have plans to expand her current enclosure over the coming year to better meet her welfare needs.
Thank you for standing with us, your support is what makes every rescue, every recovery, and every release possible.
Niamh, Matt, Ben, Rae and the wider ACES team
By Ben Sept | Board Chair and Wildlife Rescuer
By Ciaran O Mordha | Executive Director
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