Thanks to an ongoing collaboration with a local foster home, The GAAP has had the chance to see the impacts of time spent in nature on a very special group of girls.

What is required to create an effective dog and cat management program? Dr. Elena Garde shares her expertise on the topic, from a sustainable, One Health approach.

Nature has a powerful positive impact on human health, for kids of all ages, as we saw recently at The GAAP’s Nature Discovery Center.

Campeón was the victim of a brutal case of animal cruelty in Todos Santos, Guatemala, where he was attacked with a machete. Thankfully he found his way to our Telemedicine program, but now, we need your help to get him the treatment he badly needs. Read his story and give today!

Starting in December 2021, we kicked off a series of ongoing visits from a local scout group to the Nature Discovery Center and the surrounding wetlands… On the first day of kayaking, the girls were hesitant. Most didn’t even know how to swim, let alone maneuver a kayak. But, each time they have gotten stronger, always challenging themselves and encouraging one another.

We were feeling so proud of their advances, and then, just as we had ventured out a bit further one day, it happened…

This year our One Health Educators, Paula and Nadia, had the opportunity to spend four weeks with five different classes at a school in Freirina, a small community in northern Chile, engaging the students in workshops about pet health and welfare, through a One Health lens. After facilitating eight workshops with each class, Nadia and Paula asked the kids to reflect on how they will put into action what they had learned through the workshops.

One 8-year old boy, Julián, shared that after the workshops, he approached his dad about having their family's dog vaccinated and dewormed…

Dey has changed Silvia’s life, and thanks to our low-cost sterilization campaign in collaboration with Humane Society International, Silvia is able to be the responsible pet owner she wants to be so that other dogs like Dey don’t end up on the street.

Just a couple years ago, he would have been left without any kind of treatment, as the nearest veterinarian (an hour and a half away by car) could not reach the town given that roads were blocked by flooding and mud. Thankfully now, Andrés, one of our paraveterinarians in the Telemedicine program, has trained extensively and is prepared to both deliver routine care and treat minor injuries for animals in need through a telemedicine approach that includes oversight from a veterinarian in Chile.

We rarely think twice when we see a swallow flying through the sky, but these aerial acrobats are key members of our ecosystems. They rely mainly on insects that they catch mid-flight for food, so the abundance of swallow populations are a good reflection of the health of an ecosystem. Worryingly, over the last fifty years, populations of aerial insectivores that breed in North America have decreased by ~ 32% (Rosenberg et al. 2019).