What is ARCAS?

ARCAS is a non-profit Guatemalan NGO formed in 1989 by a group of Guatemalan citizens who became concerned as they saw their precious natural heritage - especially their wildlife - rapidly disappearing before their eyes.
It was originally created for a very specific and urgent purpose: to build a rescue center to care for and rehabilitate wild animals that were being confiscated on the black market by the Guatemalan government.
Since its establishment, the ARCAS Rescue Center has grown into one of the largest and most complex rescue centers in the world, receiving between 300 and 600 animals of more than 40 species per year.

ARCAS's objectives are:

• To strive for the conservation, preservation, protection and research of wildlife;
• To rescue, rehabilitate and reintroduce into their natural habitat wild animals seized from illegal traffickers;
• To promote and assist in the creation and management of protected habitat areas for wild animals;
• To support tropical wildlife veterinary medicine and research;
• To reproduce and re-introduce endangered wildlife;
• To raise awareness among Guatemalans and visiting tourists about the need to conserve natural resources through a program of education and information dissemination;
• To develop and promote economic alternatives in rural communities to the unsustainable consumption of natural resources.
  
  

Since the establishment of the Rescue Center, ARCAS has branched out into other very necessary activities including environmental education, protected areas management, marine turtle conservation, sustainable community development, ecotourism and reforestation. At its Pacific coast site of Hawaii, it manages the most productive of the 21 sea turtle hatcheries in Guatemala, rescuing nearly 40,000 olive ridley and leatherback eggs per year. Also in Hawaii, it is working with the Guatemalan government to establish a 4,000 hectare protected area focused on the local mangrove wetlands. It carries out reforestations of 2 to 40 hectares per year in different sites throughout the country. Its Environmental Education Department reaches out to over 8000 children per year throughout the country.

To learn more about what ARCAS does, check our annual reports on the publications page.

ARCAS’s three main project sites are: the Guatemala City area, the remote northern department of Petén, and the Hawaii area of the southern pacific coast.

To learn more about ARCAS´s different projects click on these links:

i) Guatemala City
(a) Environmental education
(b) Cerro Alux
(c) Networking and fundraising

ii) Petén
(a) Rescue Center
(b) Education
1. Kinkajou Kingdom
2. Educational activities and Library
(c) In situ projects
1. Macaws Without Borders
2. Spider Monkey rehab program
3. Jaguars without borders

iii) Hawaii
(a) Sea turtle conservation and research, Squeaky IX
(b) Environmental education
(c) Hawaii protected area, Finca El Salado
(d) Alianzas

iv) Wildlife trafficking enforcement activities

v) Community development activites