Tracking Calypso, the Costa Rican Sloth

Here’s an idea for getting humans involved in helping other species: sell them attractive bracelets that come with the ability to track a real animal in the wild using an app. That idea has been realized by Fahlo, the brainchild of co-founders Carter Forbes and D.J. Gunter.

Fahlo hooks up with various conservation groups – Save the Elephants or the San Diego Zoo, for example – and donates ten percent of their proceeds to protecting animals and their habitats.

We’re sold on the idea, and have so far purchased bracelets to track a lion in Kenya and a sloth in Costa Rica. The lion purchase supports the conservation group Ewaso Lions; our sloth – named Calypso – helps the Sloth Conservation Foundation and their work saving sloths in Costa Rica.

We’ve been checking in Calypso daily, as she moves about the canopies in a touristy area on the Atlantic side of the Costa Rican isthmus. The sloths wear VHF collars that emit radio signals that trackers pick up on their receivers and then manually input the GPS points to the app, which is cued to individual sloths, like Calypso.

Calypso and others are being monitored by the Urban Sloth Project, a research project studying the impact of urbanization and habitat disturbance on Costa Rica’s wild sloths. The accumulation of data on sloth movements will help policymakers develop new conservation initiatives or improve on the current ones.

Fahlo sells their bracelets – and plushies, if you prefer – at 3,000 locations: zoos, aquariums, theme parks, surf shops, and the like. “Thankfully, each year we've been growing exponentially,” Fahlo spokesperson Julia Hackman tells us. “We're now nearing $2.5 million total donations since 2018… it's increased so drastically each year!” Fahlo expects revenue to double to north of $35 million, which would pump another million into conservation initiatives.

There are ten species to choose from for tracking: sloth, sea turtle, elephant, polar bear, shark, penguin, lion, giraffe, dolphin, and gorilla. Hackman wouldn’t tell us which among them is the best seller. “Every customer has their own favorite animals!”

Among other things, these trinkets make great gifts. Check them out.