Here is a great article that was in The Miami Herald that discusses how as work proceeds on upgrading the Panama Canal, animal rescue and reforestation are an important part of the process.
Rocks and earth aren’t the only things being moved around during the mega-project to expand the Panama Canal. Animals, birds and even a few insects — rare ones — have been trapped and relocated before the excavators and earth-moving equipment arrive.
Thousands of seedlings also have been planted in communities around Panama to take the place of trees that were felled to make way for bigger locks on both the Atlantic and Pacific, new access channels and other improvements as the canal updates to allow bigger post-Panamax ships to make the crossing.
The canal traverses some of the most biologically diverse territory in the Americas, but during its 1904-1914 construction, it was a different era and no such care was taken with the wildlife. It was hard enough keeping workers, who succumbed to tropical diseases by the thousands, alive.
Now the Panama Canal Authority, coordinating with the National Environmental Authority, is working with several animal rescue contractors to move howler, squirrel and titi monkeys, sloths, crocodiles, snakes — venomous and not, amphibians, and more to new habitats where they can thrive. As of June, more than 5,800 creatures had been rescued.