IUCN Save Our Species

Happy 2013~ I hope everyone is having a wonderful new year so far! Last year ended very well for the African manatee project with the exciting news that we received a large grant from the IUCN Save Our Species Fund! The goals of this project are to identify important manatee habitat use sites within three specific areas in Senegal, Mali, and Nigeria, to implement manatee protected areas, provide training to build community-based sighting networks and alternative livelihoods, and to increase public awareness through educational programs. The project will continue to build capacity to enable informed grassroots conservation actions for the West African manatee, and will be used as a model for other future manatee conservation initiatives across Africa. Each of the three project components will be led by African researcher colleagues who have already successfully started manatee research in their respective countries...

Soumaila Berthe in San and Mopti, Mali will create manatee sanctuaries and begin a network for year round monitoring in collaboration with 5 villages along the Bani and Niger Rivers.

Boladji Abimbola in Lagos, Nigeria will train manatee hunters in aquaculture techniques and provide them with fish cages and stocked fish in order to develop alternative livelihoods to manatee hunting in coastal Nigeria.

Tomas Diagne and I will train staff hired from local villages for year round manatee monitoring, data collection, and enforcement of refuge rules at a protected area in Lac de Guiers, Senegal.

All project components will also conduct manatee educational programs for the surrounding communities and will receive equipment necessary to build longterm, sustainable projects. We are really excited to begin this work and will post updates here as it progresses.