Sun Sloth Conservation Enforcement

Quite a mouthful, but just call them the SSCE. The Sun Sloth Conservation Enforcement is a small group of conservation officers we have stationed on Barbas, the home planet of the sun sloth. These animals are critically endangered, so we are working with native populations to raise their numbers!

Sun Sloths

These sloths can't go unnoticed in their enclosure - look for a small golden blob hanging in the trees! Sun sloths are closely related to bronze sloths and mossy sloths, and are native to planet Capepo.
Unfortunately, these animals aren't doing so well. There are approximately 200 sun sloths left in the wild, and they are crucial to their native ecosystems!
Our officers have helped re-introduce thirty sloths in the last five years.

Our Officers

The Zoo has sixty officers working in the jungles of eastern Barbas, the sun sloth's native region. They manage sloth populations, exterminate invasive species, and help rehabilitate any injured animals.
Some of the methods our officers use, particularly with the removal of invasive species, is questionable at best; if we had any other fast method of countering invasive animals, we would use those. Unfortunately, we feel eradicating invasive animals is the best course of action.

A Brief History

Our first sun sloths were acquired nearly fifty years ago. We got a pair, Sami and Ola. The two sisters were inseparable from birth, and we designed a brand new enclosure to fit three, in the hopes we might get a third, a male. Two years later we received a gift from the Emesema Wildlife Park, on an island on Capepo. It was a male sloth named Erio!

Just six months later Sami fell pregnant, and we were lucky enough that she gave birth to triplets, an incredibly rare feat for a sun sloth. All three survived to adulthood; one was sent as a gift back to the Wildlife Park that gave us Erio, and we kept the other two.

Through more trading with wildlife parks, we were about to get our number of sloths up to a whopping ten! We tripled the size of the enclosure and increased our number of staff to accomodate for such a large number of sloths. But as our population grew, the population of native sloths on Capepo had taken a hit. From what was already a vulnerable species had been reclassified to critically endangered, so we felt personally responsible to do something about it.

The Enforcement's first trip to Capepo revealed a whole host of issues. Invasive species from other planets had completely outcompeted sun sloths and starved them out. Pollution from industrial regions in the south had also had a major impact on the environment.

The SSCE was put together prior to this trip, but it revealed problems way beyond what was speculated. Plans to relocate invasive species were scrapped in favour of simply culling them where it would have the least negative impact. This caused issues with locals who found the practice barbaric, but there truly was no other way around it. Culling these invasive species wasn't just aiding sun sloths, it was supporting nearly three thousand endangered animals.

In the last thirty years, the wild population has gone from roughly fifty, to two hundred. Thirty of these were from the last five years. This is all thanks to the SSCE and their incredible work!