The Hidden Forest Wildlife Sanctuary is a sanctuary for rescued exotic primates. The focus of our primate keeping volunteer programme is to work alongside the primate keepers to ensure the health and wellbeing of our rescued primates (lemurs, monkeys and gibbon).
In your first few days working with our primate keeping team, you'll think all the monkeys look and act the same. Over time, you'll experience the joy that is starting to observe their different personalities and characteristics. Our primate keeping team are responsible for all the food for the primates, for cleaning the feeding platforms and water bowls and distributing the food. They will monitor things like the weather and what is growing naturally in the forest in deciding which food and the quantities thereof to prepare for each day.
Our primate keeping team are also responsible for monitoring the free-roaming primates for any changes in behaviour, illnesses or injuries and taking the appropriate action.
As the primates are all free-roaming, you won't be spending your days shovelling up monkey poop. However, we do have a pre-release area, where any new arrivals are de-humanised and rehabilitated before they can be released into the wider forest. These enclosures do need to be kept clean, even if there are no primates in them, so there may be some occasional cleaning of enclosures.
Finally, our primate keepers are responsible for ensuring a safe and healthy environment for our primates. This involves activities such as checking the perimeter fence, making any repairs and removing alien vegetation.
Volunteers do not need to bring any special equipment with them. Volunteers will be provided with two branded golf shirts and a branded fleece to wear as uniform during their stay. Volunteers will need to bring their own pants/trousers. Accepted uniform colours are brown, grey, green or khaki/stone. Waterproof shoes/boots or wellington boots/gum boots are also recommended.
The Hidden Forest Wildlife Sanctuary Volunteer Rules
We want you to have a fantastic and fulfilling time whilst volunteering with us but we also want
to ensure that you, our staff and our resident primates remain safe. The following rules have been
put in place to ensure safety for all and to maintain the high standards of our sanctuaries.
Please read them carefully and adhere to them throughout your stay.
- When reporting for duty, all volunteers must be dressed in the issued uniform; shorts/skirts must
be of a decent length, no “hotpants”.
- Report on duty clean and sober.
- Follow the instructions of your assigned supervisor/mentor.
- Never attempt to touch or interact with (this includes teasing or encouraging a reaction
from) any of the resident primates or wild animals in our forest.
- Do not hand-feed any of the animals.
- Do not take ‘selfies’ with any animals or take photos with animals that give the impression
that you are interacting with the animal(s). Posting of any such photos on social media is a
strict contravention of our sanctuary rules.
- Volunteers are not permitted to enter the forest alone.
- If volunteers are invited to be present and/or to assist during a veterinary visit, veterinary
instructions must be followed at all times.
- Volunteers are not allowed to drive any company vehicles or work with heavy machinery or
power tools.
- Volunteers are not permitted to use the sanctuary telephones or computer equipment unless
requested or approved to do so by a member of the management team.
- Personal mobile phones must be kept out of sight (e.g. in a pocket) and left on silent or
vibrate. Volunteers are requested not to use their mobile phones in public areas.
- Smoking inside the sanctuary areas, in (or on) any vehicle and anywhere in view of visitors, is
strictly forbidden. Please use the designated smoking areas only.
NOTE: Failure to follow the rules regarding touching, hand-feeding and/or interacting with the
animals in our care will result in the volunteer being instructed to leave the Sanctuary, our
Volunteer Programme and the Volunteer House immediately
