Gustavo, Rafael, and the Sloth on the Road

That Thursday, in the sector known as El Tamarindo, a gray-furred sloth decided to cross the road at the least expected moment. Farmers Gustavo Orozco and Rafael Orozco spotted it before anyone else and didn't hesitate — they helped it across to the other side, where the animal was making its way out of the reserve. The ranger José Marín was there to document everything, and a dragonfly slipped uninvited into one of the photographs. Further along the trail, José Marín flagged a sector that appears on no official map but that the team knows well: a spot where poachers occasionally slip in to trap birds. It doesn't happen all the time, but often enough to keep on their radar. By the end of the day, walking alone through the territory, José came upon a lagoon of greenish water, ringed by vegetation so dense and deliberate that, seen from the ground, it traced the outline of a heart. It wasn't the camera that noticed — it was him, boots deep in the mud and eyes wide open, keeping watch over the 520 hectares that Fundación Loros calls home.