Help Care for Rescued Animals in Cambodia

This photo of Phnom Tamao keeper Sol hand-raising rescued douc langurs is a finalist in GlobalGiving’s 2021 Photo Contest! We’re excited to be in the running, and the prize money would go a long way at the rescue centre. Photos with the most votes can win up to $1,000! That would cover food for all of the baby animals in our Nursery for 1 month, or pay the salary of a douc langur keeper for 4 months.

Voting takes less than a minute: just click here to select our photo and confirm your choice via email. Please support us by casting your vote August 16-20th (Eastern Time)! Want to help us even more? Share our message with your network on social media or forward this email to a friend.

If you’ve been a Phnom Tamao supporter for a while, you may remember the story of these doucs from reading our reports over the past year. All of these douc langurs arrived at the Centre between February and May 2020 and each was just a few weeks old, frail and sickly when rescued. These beautiful, Critically Endangered primates are hunted for the wildlife trade, with parents generally killed and babies sold as pets. The species is extremely sensitive and notoriously difficult to raise in captivity. In the past, rescued baby doucs always died despite our best efforts. Normally baby animals are cared for in our Nursery section, but many juvenile macaques had also arrived around the same time and they often carry diseases that are harmless to them but can be fatal to other species. To avoid any risk to the baby doucs, our Head Keeper, Try Sitheng - who also snapped this photo contest finalist - suggested they instead be cared for in the Elephant section, far away from any macaques. Elephant keepers Vok and Sol stepped up to the task of bottle-feeding each baby douc every 2 hours! Today, the doucs have grown into a thriving juvenile troupe and they now live in a large enclosure with branches, ropes and swings as enrichment items to encourage natural behavior. Unfortunately, all of these orphaned doucs are humanized, so they cannot be returned to the wild but they have found both home and family the Centre. In the future, if they mate and raise their own young, their offspring may be suitable candidates for release.

Donations from GlobalGiving donors like you provide critical flexible funding that enables us to respond to the unpredictable costs and meet the surprising array of needs for animals like these doucs and thousands of others that arrive at the Centre every year. Thank you so much for your support – and please don’t forget to vote for us in the photo contest before August 20th!

Links:

• Vote now for our photo!