Wildlife Veterinary Internship

Our Veterinary and Animal Care Internship program is very important in the project progress. We require people who mainly have a deep love for animals, people who want to gain more experience and improve their skills. This program is aimed to students and to professionals who want to know more about South American species and want to share experience with South American professionals who work with endemic species since many years, while they monitor the physical and emotional health of the animals in our care.

The project

The general problem that exists in this area of ​​the Amazon is the uncontrolled use of natural resources by unscrupulous people, which causes many losses of wildlife. All animals that come to our center were rescued from illegal traffic or hunting, as a result of this, they are orphans and very young, in some cases babies who require feeding by bottle and a lot of care and interaction to gain confidence and can adapt to a new group of the same species, this is the challenge that a volunteer is faced, cover not only food but emotional needs of animals arriving after suffering abuse and malnutrition.

Internship activities

What you can expect

The facilities where they spend their days are comfortable and is a quiet environment, which allows them to work during the day and relax or do research at night. Our team is very united, we are a young organization that has grown little by little during the last 12 years, bringing together people who love what they do and contribute ideas, whose main objective is the welfare of the animals in custody. In this project your ideas will always be welcome.

The staff of RAREC speak English and Spanish. In our team we have specialists in rescues, rehabilitation and medical treatments, they live in RAREC and they will be in charge of designating the tasks and supporting volunteers in all the activities or doubts they may have. The project directors also live in RAREC and we are attentive to all the needs of the volunteers and we will collect all the information they can give us so that their work and findings will be part of the database and protocols of the project. On the other hand volunteers will work with veterinarians and caretakers in charge of primates, manatees, and others, they make their follow-up visits once a week or come in emergencies. 

We give to each volunteer RAREC t-shirts and rain boots. It is important that they bring comfortable and fresh clothes, sneakers, sandals, hats and also long-sleeved shirts and pants to avoid bugs at night.

A typical day for an Intern begins at 7 am with breakfast. The first task of all, is the preparation of food for the animals in quarantine and food for animals in nursery.

Subsequently, the medical training exercise is carried out in the designated area, or the administration of medications in the case animals are assigned in clinic or quarantine. 

There are theoretical and practical classes scheduled throughout their stay, visits of local DVM and will assist in all the medical activities guided for our on-site vet. 

On the days that we have new rescues, the interns have priority to go with our staff.

The schedule is from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., when the interns wish, they can take days off for tours, they should only tell us to schedule the tasks in advance.

We have a recreation room with movie projector, wifi, board games and hammocks to relax. Within RAREC you can hike to the creek at the end of the land or to a big lagoon where the amazonian manatees live, where you can swim, in the whole way you can observe wildlife in freedom. You can also do sport fishing.

We include boat ride on the Amazon River or float down in inner tubes on the Itaya River in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest, this activity is usually done on Sundays.

Our road connection allows us to reach any tourist place in the Region, for example the Pacaya Samiria reserve is 4 hours from RAREC by road and by river.