Manatee education campaign in Lambarene, Gabon

Last Fall the local Gabonese NGO OELO (short for Oganisation Ecotouristique de Lac Oguemoue) began an educational campaign in Lambarene, the largest town on the Ogooue River in Central Gabon. The educational campaign is greatly needed, since Lambarene and the surrounding villages along the river many adjacent lakes are the center of manatee hunting in the country. OELO was founded by Cyrille Mvele (seen below at the school he attended as a child) who grew up in the area and is concerned about the illegal hunting and decimation of Gabon's protected wildlife.

OELO hired a fulltime educational outreach coordinator, Stephanie, seen below giving a presentation. Cyrille, Stephanie, and OELO co-founder Heather all helped coordinate and participated in the manatee training workshop I taught in Gabon last September.

Programs start out by giving kids a questionnaire that tests their knowledge of protected species and then follows up by providing information on which species are protected and therefore shouldn't be hunted, sold, or eaten.

As part of a program on endangered species, kids were asked to paint their favorite wildlife species in its natural habitat. Many of the kids chose elephants and monkeys, but at least 6 kids in a recent program chose manatees. The trouble was, every painting showed manatees being killed as their natural habitat! So clearly OELO has their work cut out... but it's great that they are working so hard with younger generations to teach them the importance of wildlife protection. Here are some of the manatee paintings:

 Not only is the mother manatee in the painting above harpooned, but the man is saying "I like this"! Yikes... the reality is that many people in Africa consider manatee meat a delicacy.

In the painting above fishermen net a manatee. During the manatee education program, kids won prizes (manatee posters) for answering questions correctly.

Just recently, for World Environment Day in early June, OELO commissioned a mural to be painted by a local artist on the side of a local school. They had a big ceremony for the unveiling with presentations by school nature clubs and local dignitaries. I think it looks great and hopefully it will be a constant reminder to younger generations that wildlife is worth protecting! The artist is shown with the finished mural below. I like that the manatee is near the hippo, because we have seen the 2 species is close proximity in the wild in Gabon.

Dancers at the unveiling ceremony

Stay tuned for more great work from OELO!

Exciting News from Cameroon!

I am very happy to announce that Aristide Kamla has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship for his PhD at the University of Florida! He worked very hard over the past 2 years to achieve this scholarship- he didn't qualify the first time, but instead of giving up, he worked hard to improve his test scores, and qualified the second time he applied. Cameroon only gives one PhD Fulbright award each year and Aristide has won it, which is very impressive! My heart is bursting with joy and pride for all his hard work, and that he will be able to follow in my footsteps at UF. He plans to study baseline health of the African manatee. Congratulations Aristide for this remarkable achievement!

 Also, manatee researcher Rodrigue Ngafack will soon defend his Masters thesis study (University of Dschang) of manatees in Lake Ossa, Cameroon, and he has been accepted to present his results at the upcoming African Marine Mammal Colloquium in Western Cape, South Africa next month. My project will support his travel to this conference- it's the first time there will be an African manatee presentation there. Congratulations Rodrigue!

The new Cameroon marine mammal stranding network that Aristide started last year is also being profiled on the IUCN website- click here to read about it. Great work guys!! I'm really happy to be an advisor to this project.