Rebecca Cliffe

Dr Rebecca Cliffe is a British nature conservationist dedicated to protecting sloths and their tropical forest habitat in Costa Rica. She moved across the world to work together with local communities to understand more about the elusive lives of these slow, charismatic creatures.

Background

When Rebecca first started working with sloths over fifteen years ago, very little was known about these unique mammals, yet rescue centres across Central and South America often received them into their care. Rebecca committed herself to finding out more about these tree-dwellers and embarked on a long-term field study to learn more about wild sloths in Costa Rica. For six years, she trekked through the dense tropical forests in search of the sloths, which are hard to find due to their slow nature and impressive camouflage. Rebecca persevered and her study provided important insights into the lives of sloths in Costa Rica.

With the newly acquired knowledge she developed the first ever sloth rehabilitation and reintroduction protocol and set up the Sloth Conservation Foundation (SloCo) in 2017. Through this foundation, Rebecca creates alliances with local communities, landowners and businesses and has set up various programmes dedicated to wildlife conservation. The results are nothing less than impressive.

Rebecca and her team have engaged 3,000+ community members as conservation partners, and wildlife conflict reports have decreased by 82% They restored and reconnected over 80 km² of fragmented rainforests in Costa Rica, installed 364 arboreal wildlife bridges –the largest network of wildlife bridges in the world– and their forest nursery has grown and planted over 10,500 native trees in key locations to restore canopy connectivity. ‘Sloth School’, the SloCo’s Education Outreach programme, engages and empowers children to be stewards of their environment by increasing their understanding of sloths and how to address the threats they face.

Vision and approach

Rebecca believes that to protect sloths, you need to understand them. She has spent years in the forest, studying and monitoring the species and the threats to their existence. With her growing team at the Sloth Conservation Foundation, Rebecca implements the knowledge she acquired over the years and works with communities, businesses and the government to develop sloth conservation strategies that are mutually beneficial for both people and wildlife.

Moving Forward

Rebecca and her team are committed to advancing knowledge through rigorous research. Their studies are published in open-access, peer-reviewed journals, ensuring that their findings are accessible to the global scientific community and the public. They collaborate with several universities to deepen their understanding of sloth biology, ecology, and conservation.

In 2023, Rebecca published two scientific papers in the Zoological Science Journal, titled “The behaviour and activity budgets of two sympatric sloths; Bradypus variegatus and Choloepus hoffmanni” and “Sloth metabolism may make survival untenable under climate change scenarios”.

In 2025 SloCo launched two new projects, including the Sloth Guardians and Sloth-Friendly Tour Guide Training Program – these will empower local residents to protect sloths and promote ethical tourism. Furthermore, they expanded the Connected Gardens project into Brazil’s Atlantic Forest to support habitat connectivity for the vulnerable maned sloth. They plan to invest further resources into the Brazilian expansion, strengthening local partnerships and scaling up restoration efforts. Rebecca is exploring possible partnership with Gabriel Massocato for this project. In September 2024, Rebecca visited fellow FFN award winner Gabriel Massocato in the Pantanal, Brazil, to learn more about his work with the Giant Armadillo Project. This project visit was funded through the FFN Family Funding scheme that is aimed at strengthening collaborations across the network. The primary objectives of this visit were to collaborate on conservation initiatives, test field equipment, share region-specific knowledge, and explore potential opportunities for future partnerships.