about
gudrun sperrer
I was born in 1961 in Steyr, Austria. I have always loved nature, both my grandparents were farmers, but my parents became teachers. My father studied Psychology later in life and began teaching at a university.
Up to my 5th year we lived in a small village in the countryside. There, my father studied, my mother worked as a teacher, my elder brother and sister attended school, so my twin sister and I were left with a neighbor or grandma. We were outside most of the time. My mother still remembers that once she came home from school—I was so young, I couldn't walk very well yet, but when she arrived I came along carrying a snake longer than me and telling her "Look mummy what a big worm I've found!"
I was never afraid of animals and always wanted to have a dog or a horse, which we couldn't have because my parents worked and all of were at school. Instead I walked the neighbors' dogs and decided to study to be a veterinarian . . . but one neighbor, who was a vet, told me I wouldn't be strong enough to be able to pull out a newborn calf or horse being a woman, etc., and finally (probably also because I fell in love with a social worker) I decided to study social work. During a visit to Austria two years after I first left, my Mother showed me a notebook of my second year in primary school where I had had to write about "What I want to be when I'm grown up." I had written that I wanted to be an investigator in the jungle and have a parrot and a monkey. I hadn't remembered that wish, but maybe my subconscious did.
After having completed studies and some practice work, I left Austria wanting to do something "good" in another country. I had always wanted to get to know the Amazon, and as there was a cheap one year ticket from Aeroflot (Russian airline) to Peru, I decided to go. I found out about the many needs of people in Peru—and the impossibility of helping if you're not a millionaire.
I worked at a little village as a school teacher and after one year decided to pay $20 to Aeroflot to stay another year. I finally got a four-year contract to do some development project in that village. I had to organize the people: We made a fish pond, a pig farm and worked on sanitarian projects—that's when I fell in love with Robler, who was one of the few guys in the village with whom you could talk about more things than just football, fiestas and family. He comes from a family of 14, has 6 brothers and 5 sisters, both grandfathers came 80 years ago along the rivers from the Bolivian jungle.
After my contract was finished I didn't want to go back to Austria, and Robler and I moved to another village further from Iquitos.
I worked as the director of the kindergarten, which made me realize that at this age you still can teach children changes in behavior.
When I visited Austria in 1995, the Vienna Zoo's new attraction was a "Butterfly house." I recognized many of the butterflies from the Amazon. I was told that the people who exhibit the living butterflies buy them mostly from Costa Rica, and I though that would be a great job—working with animals, but animals you don't get attached to (at least not to each individual) and being able to make a living from them. That's when we started looking for host plants and started to breed.
During the permit process, we had to contact the biologists in charge. They noticed that I care for wildlife, and so they started dropping confiscated animals at our place. After receiving Pedro the Jaguar and having no place to send him, we decided to do all the paperwork to get official status as Custody Centre.
In between caring for the butterflies and the animals, I teach English and German at the faculty for Education and Human Sciences at the public University of the Peruvian Amazon in Iquitos.
roblar moreno
Robler was born in 1965 in San Pedro, Rio Nanay, which is the little village where I started working at the primary school.
First I got to know him as the big brother of one of my pupils, and later on as the man who helped me to make the project in the village a reality. I was used to spending time alone when I wasn't teaching, and actually LIKE to be alone some time . . . but Robler's mum used to send me one of his brothers or sisters whenever I was alone, so I "wouldn't be lonely."
He isn't a studied man as he only had the chance to finish secondary school, but he is a hard worker, and a sensible and caring man with lots of initiative.
His love for animals grew with the years—in the beginning he was either afraid of the caterpillars (they might sting or irritate the skin) or just rejected them as ugly. Now he's the one who does most work with the caterpillars, while I do more with the animals.
He is a natural botanist—it's incredible. He sees a plant once and then finds it again in the jungle. For me that's hard work. I have to look from each side, feel the leaf and still cannot be sure it's the same specie when I find it in the jungle. We have learned a lot from each other.
Shortly after we settled in a village a little further from Iquitos, people started bringing injured or baby animals that they got through shooting and eating the mothers: monkey babies, baby sloths, capybaras, etc. We always let the animals roam free, but because we fed them while they were small, they didn't move away until being grown up. The adopted animals would leave seeking mates—which was great, except most of the monkeys and also the capybara came back after a few months, bringing their mates and/or babies with them. It seemed they wanted to show them to us.
My neighbors asked afterwards, "Why do I raise animals if I don't eat them?"
We have worked together for about 17 years and we are both interested in Pilpintuwasi and our work with the butterflies and animals.