Fundación Chuwie: A sloth rescue center on the verge of shutting down in Venezuela

Juan Carlos Rodríguez pulls over on a road lined with forest. He takes out a rope and starts tossing it at the branches of a yagrumo (Cecropia peltata), a common tree in Venezuela. He brings the branch down and puts it in his car. He’s gathering food for the sloths he cares for. It’s a daily task with no fixed schedule.

The Chuwie Foundation Sloth Rescue and Rehabilitation Center is located in San Antonio, in a satellite-city area of Caracas known as Altos Mirandinos. The project began in 2020, when Juan Carlos and his wife, Haydée Rodríguez, found a convalescent sloth on the road. From its burns they suspected it had been electrocuted after coming across an electricity cable. It was treated by a veterinarian but lost several claws.

They began documenting day-to-day life with a sloth on social media. Followers grew every day. Each post received a lot of comments. People started alerting them to sloths in danger in various different places. That’s when the rescues began.

So far they have carried out more than 1,000 rescues between Caracas and Altos Mirandinos and at their facilities, where five sloths are now recovering to later be released, in addition to one that serves as an educational “ambassador.”

Love for sloths grows

In Venezuelan cities, sloths are threatened: dogs bite them, cables electrocute them, and cars run them over. Because of this, rescues have become a core activity of the organization. Every injured animal is brought to the center. There, it receives the care it needs thanks to the foundation’s partnership with Vuurman veterinary clinics. After a time, it is released on a mountain. The process can take days, weeks, or months.

Juan Carlos is a designer and Haydée is a communications professional, so they had to learn to coordinate a team of biologists and veterinarians. One problem the whole team faced was the lack of specialized literature on the subject. Intuition, practice, and advice from professionals in other countries in the region, whom they contacted by email, formed the basis of their learning.

Rodríguez has to go out daily to collect yagrumo branches. A sloth consumes around 10% of its body weight per day. His car has mechanical problems. He adds around 20 miles to the odometer with each trip. Also, at home, there is a space built for the sloths; to cut costs he built it with his own hands. The wooden stairs are already rotting. Almost all funding has come from the couple’s household: veterinary supplies, containment boxes, and fuel.

He says that, thanks to Zootopia and the character Flash, everyone now loves sloths. Chuwie, the project’s ambassador — named after Chewbacca from Star Wars — has been taken several times to educational events thanks to a mobilization permit issued by the relevant authority in Venezuela, called Ecosocialismo. Followers have requested plush toys of him. His presence attracts people: the project’s social media accounts on each platform have no fewer than 75,000 followers. Many write offering to volunteer, but the facilities are currently not equipped to receive many people. Welcoming visitors would mean using the resources of their home, and both continue to work freelance in their professions.

“Wildlife protection laws were made for a previous era and must be updated,” Rodríguez says. If touching a wild animal is illegal, then… how could they train volunteers? The couple has spoken with the relevant ministry, but negotiations have been hampered by the institution’s internal dynamics.

This rescue center is an institution for safeguarding natural heritage. It does not have a collection of animals for display — like a zoo — nor does it breed animals for sale. All animals that recover will be returned to their habitats; those that do not will become educational ambassadors. But the mobilization permit to transport sloths expired in February, and the renewal process has become complicated.

As Juan Carlos talks, he watches a sloth in rehabilitation: he lets it climb a tree to develop the skills of a wild individual. “Don’t go so high,” he tells it. It’s already too late: it’s gone too far. Now they must wait for it to come down. While doing so, he receives a call: the caller asks him to rescue a sloth. His record is six rescues in a single day.

Rodríguez does not consider himself an expert: rather, he surrounds himself with experts. They are the ones who guide his actions. He considers himself a rescuer. Specialists have found alarming data: since 2021 they noticed many sloths had crusting on their skin. Veterinarians performed skin scrapings to determine the cause. They found sarcoptic mange caused by a mite. Rodríguez believes about 2% of animals are infected. In wildlife, that is an alarming figure.

The foundation’s efforts to care for sloths have been carried out with informational gaps. There are no clear methods for diagnosing these animals: the species is little studied, so there are no formal criteria to assess an individual’s health. Its blood pressure, urine characteristics, and other parameters have yet to be established.

The project would be easier if they had a more suitable space. And they nearly did. In February 2025 they began negotiations with the mayor’s office in Carrizal, a neighboring municipality. In July they were granted a usufruct agreement for an unused plot administered by the mayor’s office. So far the handover has not taken place because of a question mark about the land’s legal status. A development company owned it but never formalized the mandatory legal transfer that should have been completed in the 1980s. And, because it disappeared in 2016, it has not been possible to contact it. Even so, in January, the foundation hired workers to clear brush from the site and remove debris.

“We are weeks away from declaring a technical closure,” Rodríguez says. That would mean no more rescues and limiting activities to continuing treatment of sloths already in care. The resource consumption required to keep the foundation running has become unmanageable. The promised land would allow them to plant yagrumos, an extremely fast-growing tree: in a few months, a specimen reaches considerable size. They planned, or had planned, to plant 400, in addition to other species. But the mayor’s office no longer even responds.

After the interview Juan Carlos goes to a rescue on the San Antonio road. He parks his car. The sloth is clinging to some wires near a high-voltage pole; its life is in danger. Rodríguez takes out a pole — an industrial, detachable rod — and positions an end to touch the animal. The idea is that it will grasp it with its claws. That usually doesn’t happen, but they have to try. It doesn’t work. With every passing truck he signals for it to stop. If someone could climb onto the roof, they could grab the sloth with their hands. After 40 minutes of persistence, a pickup finally stops to offer help. From the roof, he manages to catch it and put it in the bed. It may be the last rescue there will be for a long time.

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