Fast-Moving Conservation for Slow-Moving Sloths

In December of 2025, two species of two-toed sloth were added to CITES Appendix II during the CoP20 in Uzbekistan. It was a landmark ruling and the culmination of work that FFN Award winner Rebecca Cliffe has been building for over a decade.

For sloths and beyond

The sloth’s story is older than it looks. Millions of years ago, their ancestors, the giant sloths,  were dispersed across landscapes surrounded by megafauna that is now long extinct. These are the same forces that shaped the forests from which avocados would eventually spread to every brunch table on earth. Today’s sloths are the last living thread of that ancient partnership. They are, in their slow and deliberate way, keystone creatures in the ecosystems that remain.

When those ecosystems fragment, as they are currently across Central America, where urban expansion, ranching, and road networks cut forests into ever-smaller patches, sloths cannot move between them. They cannot find mates, food, or shelter. They fall to the ground, where dogs attack them, vehicles hit them, and traffickers find them.

Adorable yet vulnerable

Sloths hang at the perfect intersection of adorable and vulnerable. Their unhurried pace and perpetual half-smile have made them magnets for wildlife tourism and thus for trafficking. The exploitation of sloths by the tourism industry has intensified in recent decades. In South America, a baby sloth can sell for up to $200 along a single highway. Multiply that across the continent, and across years, and what looks like a harmless photo opportunity becomes a pipeline.

Most baby sloths in the trade were forcibly separated from their mothers, and many do not survive the journey. It is estimated that about 90% of wild-caught sloths die in trade. Over the past 42 years, Hoffmann’s sloth in Brazil has seen its population decline by 28%. Despite such losses, sloths still carry a “Least Concern” classification on the IUCN Red List, the global benchmark for species in danger. This designation masks a more fractured picture on the ground, where population data is thin, enforcement is patchwork, and the animals most at risk are precisely those most in demand.

CITES adoption gives a thread to hang on to

Led by Brazil, Costa Rica, and Panama, three countries watching their own populations erode, the proposal to list both Hoffmann’s two-toed sloth and Linnaeus’s two-toed sloth under CITES Appendix II passed unanimously at the CoP20. The practical effect is immediate: any country importing or exporting sloths must now issue permits and prove the trade is legal and sustainable. Traffickers can no longer pass wild-caught animals off as captive-bred without documentation.

What is CITES?

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is an international agreement among countries to address the trade in species under threat. Within CITES, each appendix has its own function. For example, species listed in Appendix I are given the strictest protection, with commercial trade banned, and this is often reserved for species facing imminent extinction. Appendix II focuses on monitoring and controlling trade in the listed species, requiring countries to demonstrate that any export or import is legal, sustainable, and does not harm wild populations. This is Appendix II, where the sloths have now been included. 

The scientist who refused to wait

At 18, Rebecca Cliffe bought a one-way ticket from Preston, England, to a Costa Rican rainforest. What she found there was sloths arriving daily at rescue centres in bad shape, either electrocuted, dog-attacked, or bulldozed out of trees. This inspired her life’s work. When Future For Nature recognised Rebecca with the award in 2022, she used the monetary prize to train something no one had trained before: the world’s first sloth scat-detection dog. The dog’s job is to find sloth droppings. Sloths tend to descend from tree canopies to defecate on the ground, providing information and samples for genetic analysis, thereby giving scientists the tools to accurately count wild populations. Before this, no one knew, with any confidence, how many sloths remained.

The foundation she built around this work, the Sloth Conservation Foundation (SloCo), now employs ten full-time staff in one of Costa Rica’s poorest provinces. It has reforested over 60 square kilometres, installed 300 wildlife bridges over roads so arboreal animals can cross safely, and educated more than 7,000 schoolchildren. In 2020, her advocacy helped the Costa Rican government declare the sloth an official national symbol, ensuring authorities have the mandate and resources to protect them.

One ruling, many gaps still to fill

The CITES listing is a necessary win, but it is not sufficient on its own. Appendix II controls trade, but it does not restore forests, nor does it build wildlife corridors or change the mind of a tourist who sees a baby sloth and wants to hold it. The demand that drives trafficking is as much a cultural problem as a legal one.

That is precisely the territory where organisations like SloCo operate: in schools, with landowners, at community meetings, and through the quiet daily work of reforestation and rehabilitation. The law can close a border. Science and community trust are what keep a species in the canopy.

Last seen hanging, still there, and now protected.