Brazil fires: How you’re helping Melancia the tapir recover
News
Thanks to you, our partners at Onçafari are helping Melancia, a young tapir recover from severe burns caused by manmade fires in Brazil.
Image credit: Onçafari
Melancia, a young tapir, was found in critical condition with severe burns on her paws, which exposed her bones and severely limited her movements. But thanks to the wonderful support of animal lovers like you, she’s becoming stronger and healthier every day.
Young Melancia was found without her mother, which made her recovery process even more challenging. With your support, she and another tapir Valente who shares a similar fate, are receiving treatment for their severe burns.
While Valente is close to returning to his natural habitat, Melancia will need more time to fully recover. She will need to learn essential survival behaviours before being reintroduced into the wild.
How you’re helping wildlife in Brazil
Tapirs like Melancia are essential to the ecosystem, spreading seeds that help forests thrive. But the survival of tapirs and other wildlife in the region is under huge threat, with the factory farming activities of meat-producing giants like JBS destroying their habitats.
Fires are being deliberately started to grow soy and corn in wildlife habitats like Melancia’s home. Then, these corporations purchase these crops to feed the animals on their factory farms a cheap and inadequate diet to make them reach slaughter weight.
And it’s not just wildlife who are hurt because of this. Many traditional communities who depend on these forests for their livelihoods are also deeply affected by these fires and are struggling to survive.
But with your help, World Animal Protection is supporting Onçafari in the rehabilitation of Melancia, Valente and more animals like them. You’re helping provide nutritious food, and veterinary care, as well as helping with logistics. With your support, together, we are tackling the root cause of this problem and are able to monitor the recovery of affected wild animals until they return to the wild.
Thanks to your amazing support, these sweet tapirs will soon make it back to the wild, where they belong.
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