Habitat loss, road accidents, the illegal pet trade, and human encroachment push Guanacaste's wildlife into vulnerable situations every day. Howler monkeys electrocuted on power lines. Parrots seized from traffickers. Ocelots injured by vehicles. Wild animals that find themselves alive but unable to return to the forest without help.

APAMI Wildlife Rescue Center is where many of them go.

APAMI's core mission is a full circle: rescue an animal, restore it to health, return it to the wild. Every animal that arrives at the center — whether injured in a road collision, electrocuted on a power line, seized from an illegal trafficker, or orphaned by habitat loss — receives immediate veterinary attention from a team that includes a registered veterinarian, a registered biologist, and a veterinary epidemiologist.

The animals APAMI cares for are as diverse as Guanacaste's ecosystem. Visitors to the sanctuary have encountered howler monkeys, spider monkeys, ocelots, margays, crocodiles, tamarins, scarlet macaws, toucans, owls, parrots, peccaries, and deer — each with their own rescue story, each receiving care calibrated to their specific needs and rehabilitation timeline. Where release is possible, APAMI works systematically to reintroduce animals to their natural habitat. Where it is not — due to injury, imprinting, or the impossibility of return after illegal trafficking — the sanctuary provides a permanent, ethical home.

APAMI's 20-hectare sanctuary on Ruta Nacional Secundaria 155 in Santa Cruz is not a zoo. It is a working refuge, organized around approximately 22 enclosures, structured to support both active rehabilitation and long-term permanent residents. The sanctuary operates entirely without toxic chemicals or pesticides and grows much of its own organic produce to feed the animals in its care — a commitment to sustainability that mirrors the organization's values at every level.

The facility is staffed by a permanent team and supported by a rotating cohort of volunteers and international interns. The day-to-day reality of sanctuary care — feeding schedules, medical treatment, behavioral monitoring, enclosure maintenance — is demanding and continuous. APAMI's funding model is built primarily around guided visits, which means every tour booked is a direct contribution to the animals currently in their care.

APAMI was built with education at its center, and that has never changed. Their guided tours — available to individuals, families, school groups, and corporate partners — are not passive experiences. Guides walk visitors through the rescue story of each resident animal, explaining the threats that brought them to APAMI and what the community can do to reduce them. Costa Rican history, ecology, culture, and the ancestral heritage of the land are woven throughout.

For students and young professionals, APAMI offers structured internship programs providing hands-on experience in wildlife care, veterinary support, and conservation practice. They welcome school groups for educational visits and actively work to build conservation literacy in the communities surrounding the sanctuary. Their Monkey Blog — published on their website — documents life at the center with the kind of specificity that makes donors and supporters feel genuinely connected to the work.

APAMI understands that rescue without habitat protection is an incomplete answer. Forest loss threatens over half of Costa Rica's native species. Real estate development, road expansion, and agricultural encroachment have fragmented the corridors that wildlife depend on to move, feed, and reproduce. APAMI's sanctuary land is itself a protected habitat — 20 hectares of native forest and ecological richness held in trust for the animals that live there and the broader ecosystem that surrounds it.

Wildlife trafficking crosses borders. APAMI cares for animals from Costa Rica and beyond — species brought into the country illegally who have no safe path of return. Through rescue, education, and advocacy, they work to break the cycle of captivity at its source: by changing what communities know, what they tolerate, and what they understand to be at stake.

Sol Gallery and APAMI share the same stretch of Guanacaste coast and the same belief: that the community around you is worth showing up for. For APAMI, that means the animals. For Sol Gallery, it means the people who care about them — and creating a space where that care becomes action.

The partnership is built around Jungle Fever — an annual fundraising event held inside Sol Gallery, with live art demonstrations, live performances, and an art raffle, all in support of APAMI's rescue and rehabilitation work. 

The gallery transforms for the evening: part jungle, part stage, part community gathering. It is the kind of event that makes people feel connected to something larger than a night out.

Works donated by Sol Gallery artists to the Jungle Fever raffle go directly to APAMI's operations — their retail value representing both the generosity of the artists and the gallery's stake in the wildlife that makes Guanacaste worth living in.

A $1,000 Sol Gallery gift certificate was donated to the Jungle Fever raffle — won by a community member and redeemed toward original art. As the partnership with APAMI grows, this space will expand to reflect the works that follow.

The most direct way to support APAMI is to visit. 

The sanctuary is funded primarily through guided tours — every entrance fee goes toward the food, medicine, and veterinary care the animals receive that week. A visit takes a morning. It leaves you with a different understanding of what lives alongside you in Guanacaste and what it costs to protect it. 

If you want to give more time, APAMI welcomes volunteers for stays of a day to a month — and structured internships for students and professionals looking for hands-on conservation experience. Their intern housing restoration project (converting their former zoologist's house into dedicated intern accommodation) is actively underway, meaning the program is growing. 
 

Financial donations go directly to operations: medical care, food, enclosure upgrades, and rescue transport. Corporate partnerships are available for businesses that want to build a structured, visible relationship with the sanctuary. 

And for those who want to give through art, the Jungle Fever fundraiser at Sol Gallery is where original artwork meets real conservation impact. Watch the events calendar.