WildLife on Easy Street’s Costa Rican and Panama Projects

 

After just a week in Central America I am reminded how fortunate we are to live in the United States.  The things we take for granted, like freedom, availability of goods and the opportunity to shape our own destinies through education, creativity and hard work are luxuries far beyond the grasp of most of this planet’s inhabitants.  It’s good to be home.

 

WildLife on Easy Street’s Global Coordinator

 

Pat Quillen has spent the past 31 years devoted to intensive study and hands-on experience with the majority of small and medium sized species of wild cats.  In 1978 Pat founded S.O.S., Care and still maintains the facility.  She has become internationally known for her work and knowledge on housing, husbandry, behaviour, nutrition and infant/neonate nutrition and care of the world's small wild cats.   In 1989 Pat was nominated for the Chevron Conservation Award, and she has been featured by CNN Science & Technology.  Pat also assisted PBS and 20th Century Fox, BBC 1 and National Geographic on film projects featuring wild cats, and she is a member of the World Conservation Union Species Survival Commission.   She and the San Diego Zoo host the Small Felid Workshop each year and she was selected to join the original 12 members of the American Zoological Association’s, Felid Taxon Advisory Group.  Her “family” is currently comprised of 30 Margay, Tigrina, Black Footed Cats, Sand Cats and a recently confiscated Serval.  U.S. Fish and Wildlife has placed confiscated animals with Pat. She has consulted with zoos when they have problems with behaviour or breeding.  Her cats and her work are featured in many publications and her name is widely recognized in the zoo world as a cat specialist.  More importantly, there’s not a cat we’ve encountered who didn’t immediately recognize Pat as a kindred spirit.  

 

I met Pat at the Small Felid Workshop in Las Vegas in May 1998 and visited with her again in April 1999 at the AZA Felid Taxon Advisory Group meeting hosted by Disney in Orlando.  Shortly thereafter, Pat visited WildLife on Easy Street  and we had the chance to talk about our ultimate goals for the wildcats.  We are both in the unenviable position of having to dedicate much of our time and resources into putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.  It means the world to the cats we rescue, but it doesn’t cure the problem.  Our common goal is to make a difference that will preserve the cats in the wild and preserve the existing gene pool for future integrity of the species. 

 

WildLife on Easy Street & S.O.S., Care Go Worldwide!

 

Pat shared with me the details of the projects in which she has participated in Brazil and those that she’s been negotiating in other countries of the world.  When she was invited by Yolanda de Metamores, President of the Central American Zoological Association, and Director of the Simon Bolivar Zoo in San Jose, to come advise them on housing and husbandry of their cats, she asked WildLife on Easy Street to come and share the concepts and designs that have proven useful, economical and enjoyable to the 146 cats that we house.

 

Almost all of the 28 cat species are endangered and many are perched right on the edge of destruction.  Most of the exotic cats in the U.S. are termed “generic” meaning there is no known purity of the sub species.  It has taken the thousands of years that humans have dominated animals for us to realize, only in the very recent past, that we have to plan for the future, or there won’t be one.  Only in your lifetime have we started to concern ourselves with preserving our very life support system.  The concept of zoos as collections for amusement has only recently begun to evolve into a “Noah’s Ark” for survival of the species and as a forum to educate the masses.  In this time zoos have formed national and global alliances and have been instrumental in the formation of laws to protect the animals in the wild.  They have