Kelly Mariela Mucha is a Wildlife Rehabilitation Specialist and one of the four core members of Hoja Nueva’s Khan ReWilding Center team. Originally from Ayacucho and now based in Madre de Dios, she has developed extensive practical expertise caring for Amazonian wildlife through years of work at the center.

Kelly has particular responsibility for Hoja Nueva’s nursery and for young, orphaned, or otherwise vulnerable wildlife requiring intensive early care. These cases can involve around-the-clock feeding, nutritional management, health monitoring, temperature regulation, socialization with appropriate conspecifics, and carefully balancing the human support an infant may initially need with the longer-term goal of independence.

As animals mature, Kelly helps transition them toward increasingly natural diets, environments, social relationships, enrichment, and reduced dependence on caregivers. Her work spans a wide range of species and also includes the daily care of non-releasable animals for whom long-term welfare rather than release is the appropriate outcome.

In addition to nursery work, she participates in routine husbandry, behavioral observation, enrichment, cleaning, diets, tortoise care, and rehabilitation of species such as peccaries and other mammals.

Kelly’s role reflects one of Hoja Nueva’s central rehabilitation principles: young animals sometimes require intensive and compassionate care to survive, but successful rehabilitation ultimately means helping them become less dependent on people—not more.