It's Official! African Manatees are now CITES Appendix I

Not surprisingly, after the CITES COP overwhelmingly reached a consensus to uplist African manatees from Appendix II to Appendix I, the proposal was quickly approved at the CITES plenary session last week. So it will be official in approximately 90 days. What does this mean? It will ban international commercial trade, but in reality not many African manatees are legally traded (about 19 have gone to aquariums in Asia over the past decade). I dearly hope this measure will bring attention to all the poaching of the species and lead to crackdowns in illegal trade of manatee meat and parts in African countries, but the skeptic in me is concerned that without dedicated funds, not much will happen. The good news is governments in many African countries support protecting their manatees (13 country reps signed a declaration stating they will work towards specific objectives to decrease illegal hunting, improve manatee habitat altered by human development, and promote research, conservation and educational outreach), but I hope we can keep the good will and momentum going. And work on fundraising! I plan to continue my collaboration with the enegetic folks at the Species Survival Network in order to start working on those declaration objectives.

For researchers such as myself, a CITES Appendix I designation also means we'll need additional permits to export/import manatee scientific specimens for analysis and educational purposes, and it will be more difficult overall. It adds another level to the dizzying number of permits I already need to keep up with, and I'm not complaining, but it can be frustrating to work so hard to do the right thing, and then see poachers openly selling manatee meat in markets. It'll take alot of work and a long time to change the way things are, but I'm happy that I have some very dedicated African colleagues to work alongside. Here's hoping the new CITES rule will make a real difference in African manatee conservation.

CITES COP16 African Manatee Consensus‏

On Wednesday at the CITES Conference of Parties (COP16) in Bangkok, Thailand, the range states reached a consensus to uplist the African manatee to CITES Appendix I. This is actually a bit surprising given the lack of population and illegal trade data that exists for African manatees, but I think it speaks well of the interest of countries around the world wishing to protect our favorite species! If interested, you can read a blog post written by a colleague from Species Survival Network, who is attending the meeting. The consensus will not be official until after the COP16 plenary meeting next week, but it should encounter little difficulty being adopted since there has already been a consensus. I hope this status change will translate into actual protection on the ground for manatees in Africa, and not just become another rule that is never enforced. I don't mean to be a pessimist, but there are already so many laws meant to protect African manatees, yet almost no enforcement anywhere in Africa. I also hope this new CITES designation will also raise awareness about the species around the world, since most people I encounter don't even know there are manatees in Africa. There's been some good reporting from the CITES COP16, see the following links:

Born Free Foundation
The Guardian
National Geographic

African Manatee Proposal to CITES

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is an agreement between governments to ensure that trade of animals and plants does not threaten their survival (I got that wording from their website because I couldn't have said it better myself!). For endangered species, legal international trade (which includes both commercial trade as well as import/export for scientific study, educational purposes, etc.) requires obtaining an export permit from the country the wildlife originates from, and an import permit to bring it to another country. CITES also works to try to stop illegal wildlife trade by agreeing upon regulations that are agreed upon by their 177 member countries. Every few years they hold a Conference of Parties to review and vote upon proposals to update species regulatory status. This year the conference is in March in Bangkok, Thailand, and there's a proposal to uplist the African manatee from Appendix II to Appendix I, meaning that there is a request to increase restrictions on trade for African manatees.

The co-chairs of the Sirenian Specialist Group have written a very strong and eloquent letter to CITES in support of raising the African manatee to CITES (to read it click here)

It's Never Dull

Even though I'm not in the field right now (I postponed my return to Africa until later in the spring to get some much needed lab work done here in Gainesville, FL) the African manatee project still has alot of different things going on. I've spent quite alot of time over the past couple months working with partners on a proposal to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) that would hopefully increase regulation and protection of African manatees (more about this in my next post), as well as setting up collaborations with colleagues in 4 African countries, working on the usual grant applications and reports to keep the project funded (always my greatest challenge!), writing a proposal for a national manatee management plan for Senegal that was requested by their Ministry of the Environment, and shipping equipment to Africa.

Yesterday I sent off several barrels full of project t-shirts (that we give out during educational outreach programs), books and other field equipment by ship to Senegal. It will only take 3 weeks to get there, and this method will save the project thousands of dollars over shipping via the airlines.

In the lab I'm focusing on the stable isotope work these days, which is the analysis that's going to help me determine what types of food African manatees eat, to see if there are seasonal differences in their diet, and if their diet varies by age. Right now I'm processing reference samples- the food resources that manatees eat (which have either been confirmed by observing manatees eating in the wild or found in stomach samples from dead manatees, and even a few sources I'm not sure of, but that I suspect they might eat). As readers of the blog will remember, I collected many species of plants, fish and mollusks in Senegal last summer, so that's what I'm working with now.

First we sample different parts of each specimen... I've learned quite a bit about freshwater mussel anatomy! For plants I sample leaves, roots, stems, and seeds.

Samples go into these tiny glass vials, and once I have alot of them they are dried in a special oven for 24 hours.

After they're dried, all the samples are crushed into powder. Which turns out to be harder than it looks, because the samples are minute yet somehow the powder goes flying everywhere. One of the best methods I've learned so far is to chop the samples inside the vials using very fine scissors. After a couple hours your hands cramp up, but at least it preserves most of the sample!

Every single thing about this process is tiny and delicate, which is challenging for a fairly non-graceful person like myself! After the powder is crushed, a minute amount has to be placed in individual tin capsules. First the empty capsule is weighed on a very sensitive balance, then the powder is added with a miniture spatula. This is my biggest nightmare- a couple grains of powder too much and I'm over the limit, and getting excess powder back out means I always take too much. It literally took me 15 minutes to get the correct amount of powder in my first capsule. I started calculating 15 minutes x 200+ samples and almost had a nervous breakdown, but they tell me I'm getting better at it!

 Thankfully Michelle, an undergraduate in the lab, is a very patient teacher! Once the powder is in the capsule, the tin is gently closed up and smashed into a tiny ball. This is good for getting some aggression out after dealing with the balance!

After that each ball goes in a separate well in a mini tray. We also put in "standards" that have known values, to make sure the machine that reads the carbon and nitrogen content of each sample is working correctly. Once the tray is full, it goes off to another lab to have the sample values read. And then I'll hopefully get some interesting results!

I'm really enjoying learning the technique, as well as the great discussions I'm having with stable isotope researchers about all the possible ways we can study manatees with this tool. There has been very little of this kind of research done for manatees so far, and all of it was with the Florida manatee, so everything we're learning about African manatees is completely new... which makes it all worth it!

The Good and the Sad

It seems there's always a mix of good news with bad and sad for African wildlife, and the African manatee is no exception.

The sad news is that manatee hunting is still almost a daily event in Lambarene, Gabon, a town on the Ogouue River in the central interior of the country (and in many other places in Africa as well). Despite full legal protection under Gabonese law, specialist manatee hunters operate year round, and manatee meat is openly sold in local markets and restaurants. When I was in Lambarene in 2006, I was chased out of the market for trying to photograph crocodile and monkey carcasses for sale, but now I'm told tourists can photograph in the same market at will, which means that fear of wildlife law enforcement is nonexistent for the vendors. I've worked with a Gabonese colleague in the area off and on for a 5 years now and have tried to get him to collect samples of manatee meat so that I can do genetics analysis on this population to help me to determine the population size, their relatedness to other manatee populations in Gabon, and the impact of hunting in the region. However, the fellow has documented numbers of hunted manatees in some surrounding local villages, but hasn't collected any samples. I'm not sure why, but partially I think it's because he doesn't understand all the information genetics can tell us, and that it can lead to a direct effect on conservation actions.

So I was thrilled when some friends / colleagues recently moved to the area to start an ecotourism NGO. Not only are they interested in creating community-run ecotourism, but in studying the wildlife and ecosystem in this lush and remote area. Heather and Cyrille have started l’Organisation Écotouristique du Lac Oguemoué (OELO) which offers camping trips, lake paddling tours, forest walks, wildlife viewing and experiencing traditional Gabonese village culture (check out their Facebook page here). I hope to join them there next summer. But they've also been documenting bushmeat for sale in the Lambarene market and are ready to start helping to study this vulnerable population so that we can finally begin to understand the manatees in the Ogouue River and the impact of heavy hunting.

This is Cyrille & Heather when they received their African manatee t-shirts from my project at Christmas...

And this is what they're seeing in the market... manatee meat in a wheelbarrow

So while I'm horrified at the amount of manatee slaughter taking place in central Gabon, I'm very happy to have energetic colleagues joining our African manatee network!

In other sad news, I just heard from my colleague Kouame in Ivory Coast that their office was looted and completely destroyed during the political violence that occured in Abidjan last year, and all their equipment stolen, including the new field sampling gear I had just given them in 2010. Also lost were genetic samples they (and their former leader Akoi Kouadio who passed away) had been collecting for years for me to analyze. The good news is the violence has finally ended there, but the African manatee program (which was the longest continuously running research project for the species) has lost its funding and is over for now. Sometimes it feels like 1 step forward, 2 steps back...

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.

Africa is Not a Country Photography Exhibit

For those of you in the Portsmouth, NH area, a photography exhibit entitled "Africa is not a Country" is up and running for the month of November. I have 4 photos in the show (including one of Victor, shown below), and proceeds from the sale of my photos and postcards will benefit my African manatee research. The exhibit is being held by the Seacoast African American Cultural Center and admission is free. To get directions or read more about the show, please click here.