Empathy training for security guards reveals cougars and sloths in Ecuador’s campus forests

Deep inside the forested corners of a university campus in Guayaquil, Ecuador, a security guard spots two men with machetes carrying a two-toed sloth. The hikers who reported them had seen something troubling: the animal was destined for the cooking pot. Thanks to a sensitisation course that had just transformed how the campus’s private security workforce views wildlife, the sloth was rescued, treated for three deep machete cuts to its head, rehabilitated and released back into the forest. This verified case of illegal hunting of Choloepus hoffmanni for bushmeat consumption is the first of its kind documented on the Ecuadorian Coast, and it emerged not from camera traps or academic surveys, but from the newfound vigilance of guards who had learned to see wild animals as beings worth protecting.

The story unfolds at ESPOL Polytechnic University’s Gustavo Galindo Campus, a 570-hectare territory that holds two main forested areas: the Prosperina Protected Forest, connected to the Cerro Blanco Reserve, and the Parcón area forest with its lake. These patches sit within the Darien-Chongón-West of Ecuador conservation hotspot, a region designated for its high endemic diversity and alarming degree of deforestation. Students and visitors from the densely populated city of Guayaquil frequent these forests daily for hiking and biking, and the landscape contains stationary water systems that become lifelines for fauna during the harsh dry season of the Ecuadorian dry tropical forest. When water grows scarce, animals concentrate around these bodies, making the forests essential for maintaining faunal populations.

Researchers at ESPOL identified the university’s private security guards as a key actor for conservation. The guards patrol the area continuously, hold high prevalence on the ground and had previously collaborated in sporadic consultations on animal-human conflict cases. In December 2021, the team implemented a six-hour sensitisation course with an empathetic approach, attended by 96.6 percent of the active workforce, 87 of 90 guards aged between 19 and 63. The course focused on charismatic mammals present in the Prosperina forest: ocelots, jaguarundis, jaguars, cougars, two-toed and three-toed sloths, Ecuadorian capuchins and howler monkeys, with superficial coverage of white-tailed deer and northern tamanduas. Rather than dry lectures, the strategy drew on ethology, recognising animal emotions such as joy, surprise, fear and aggression, and describing the daily dramas, needs and conservation issues of each species.

The results were striking. Questionnaires administered before and after every two-hour workshop revealed significant improvements across all topics evaluated. Predator identification success rose from 32.6 to 58.5 percent, a 179.4 percent increase. Primate identification soared from 10.5 to 68.5 percent, a staggering 652.4 percent jump. Footprint identification, nearly nonexistent before the course at 0.5 percent, climbed to 27.8 percent. Averaged across all issues covered, knowledge improved by 163.4 percent. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests confirmed that the before and after groups were significantly different for primates, carnivores and sloths, and Spearman’s analysis showed no correlation between age and results, meaning the gains were universal across the workforce.

Attitudes shifted as well. Of 67 participants who completed the animal preference questionnaire before and after the course, wild species were selected 151.6 percent more often and native species 142.9 percent more often. Before the course, from all the species covered, only the cougar was mentioned once as a favourite. Afterwards, every covered species was selected at least once, totalling 21 mentions, with the cougar and jaguar leading at seven and six mentions respectively. Dogs and domestic cats remained the most popular animals overall, but the guards’ expanded appreciation of wild and native fauna signalled a genuine change in perspective. The researchers attribute this to the empathetic approach: by explaining animals’ lives and emotions, listeners relate not only to their challenges but to the beings themselves, fostering a biophilic attitude that leads to critical thinking and actual conservation actions.

The guards’ response in the field was immediate and measurable. From just two reports in the three years before the course, fourteen cases were reported during the following ten months. Most detections occurred in areas close to roads and urbanised sections of the campus, and ten of sixteen reports involved animals at risk of interfering with traffic. The coordination network grew to involve the university’s Biodiversity Unit, Ministry of Environment technicians and the Municipal Environmental Police. In total, three translocations, two transportations to a rehabilitation centre, six follow-ups, two presence communications and three corpse disposals were performed. The Ministry coordinated four liberation events involving two-toed sloths, northern tamanduas, common opossums and green iguanas, with guards guiding technicians in every case.

Beyond rescues, the guards’ collaborations opened the door to remarkable field research. In the Parcón area, a guard led researchers to a suspected felid footprint, and nearby, in the riverine mud of the lake, a 6-centimetre-wide footprint matching the characteristics of a tayra was found alongside scattered pigeon feathers indicating a predation event. A crawfish head discovered five metres away suggested either a Neotropical otter or, more feasibly given previous records, the opportunistic tayra had been foraging in the mud. In the Prosperina forest, during nocturnal follow-up of a released sloth, researchers found a concentration of feathers and urine markings, placed camera traps, and within two hours recorded two types of predator vocalisations at approximately 50 metres distance.

Those vocalisations may belong to one of South America’s most elusive predators. The first call, a 3.8-second maintained yowl ranging from 430 to 312 Hz with a dominant frequency around 400 Hz, fits descriptions of Puma concolor vocalisations documented by Logan and Sweanor, who identified a 3 to 7 second yowl interpreted as an agonistic call related to sexual identity, dominance or territory advertisement. The second type, short broken calls of 0.28 to 0.39 seconds between 7 and 11 second intervals, matches the ouch call, an agonistic vocalisation of frustration. A resting place was detected 44 metres from the camp in a low-visibility, densely vegetated area with transformed terrain of approximately two metres diameter, matching literature descriptions of cougar resting sites that provide thermoregulatory benefits and protection from predation risk. Cougars are categorised as critically endangered on the Ecuadorian coast, and the last records in Guayas Province date to 1991. The researchers suggest that specimens in the area could constitute a relict population surviving in connected forests relatively close to urban settlements, possibly expanding their mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic when public access was severely limited and the guards, who operated continuously, made no wildlife communications in 2020 or 2021, underscoring the role sensitisation played in activating the reporting network.

The data gathered sustained adaptive management actions. Twenty cycling itineraries had been declared inside the ESPOL limits, and the researchers considered this extension of use detrimental for large animals requiring large territories and low disturbance, such as native ungulates and wild cats. After a two-hour interactive talk to the leading cyclist association explaining protected area objectives and international management experiences, five declared itineraries were closed, two non-declared ones were shut down, and three alternatives were proposed following fire clearings. Signalling was implemented across the campus within a three-week response time: 15 signals informed visitors about itinerary closures, the importance of areas for fauna, traffic slowdown, hunting prohibition, and the Environmental Ministry’s contact number for reporting incidences. Core areas for protection were identified in both the Prosperina forest and Parcón, where water systems and best-preserved forests provide essential resources for wildlife.

The ESPOL experience demonstrates that sensitising key actors with empathy-based strategies, combined with research and consequent management, can transform conservation outcomes on the ground. The guards evolved from passive observers into a predominantly static monitoring network that ultimately led to research discoveries and management actions. The researchers recommend incorporating empathy-promoting activities in environmental education, lecturing about local species diversity and trace identification techniques to promote citizen-based wildlife surveillance, investing in active surveillance and patrol presence to impede hunters from entering protected core areas, and conducting further non-invasive research with camera traps. As human populations grow and large carnivores cohabit near human settlements, the capacity of local people to coexist with wildlife becomes the decisive factor in their survival. In the forests of a Ecuadorian university campus, a workforce once indifferent to the sloths and cats sharing its territory now stands as their first line of defence.

Subject of Research: Environmental sensitisation of security guards combined with wildlife research and adaptive management for conservation in ESPOL University forests, Ecuador

Article Title: Sensitisation, research and management for conservation within ESPOL University forests after the COVID-19 pandemic, Ecuador

Article References: Villalba-Briones, R., Piedrahita, P. M., Garces, D. O., & Monrós, J. S. (2023). Sensitisation, research and management for conservation within ESPOL University forests after the COVID-19 pandemic, Ecuador. Neotropical Biology and Conservation, 18(4), 283-303. https://doi.org/10.3897/neotropical.18.e110615

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/neotropical.18.e110615

Keywords: Sensitisation, research, management, conservation, within, ESPOL, University, forests, COVID-19, pandemic, Ecuador, scientific research