While I’ve been working in the lab analyzing samples, Tomas has been working at Tocc Tocc Community Reserve at Lac de Guiers in northern Senegal, outfitting and training the reserve’s new EcoGuards (the African equivalent of park rangers). Although the reserve has existed for a few years now, we have only recently secured the funds to hire and train staff to monitor the wildlife (particularly the […]

  I’m very pleased to announce that my project has just been awarded another grant from the USFWS Wildlife Without Borders Program for African manatee research and conservation! This is my fourth consecutive grant from this funder, and this year the funds will be focused on projects in Central Africa, particularly Gabon and Cameroon. Now that I have the funding, I can start planning my

Just after I left for Guinea-Bissau, Tomas got a report of a dead manatee in central Senegal at Bamboung marine protected area. Our car was in the shop for repair, but Tomas was undaunted… he rented a car and drove through the night to get to Bamboung to do a necropsy and collect samples with the local EcoGuards. This was another great opportunity for us

My three Spanish colleagues from CBD-Habitat arrived in Bissau late night on May 20. Pablo and Mercedes work primarily with Mediterranean Monk seals in Mauritania, and they were joined by Victor, an “animal capture specialist” from the Spanish Ministry of the Environment who primarily works with birds of prey. The next day we took the capture nets they had brought from Spain to be fitted

On Friday morning I flew from Dakar to Bissau, which was a short 40 minute flight, but as usual in Africa the process at the airport beforehand took several hours, most of which I spent with my fellow passengers standing on the bus that eventually transported us from the terminal to the plane. They loaded us onto the bus and then left us there for

I’ve now been in Senegal for 10 days, and tomorrow I continue south to Guinea-Bissau. While here in Dakar I had a productive meeting with Captain Abba Sonko at the Water and Forestry to discuss future plans. Captain Sonko was the person who submitted the proposal to CITES to up-list the African manatee to Appendix I, so he’s very proud that it succeeded, and we’re now both working

It’s been a busy spring, I’ve just finished my very last class for my PhD and a lot of lab work for both my genetics and stable isotope projects, and now it’s time to get back out to fieldwork in Africa! On Sunday I fly to Senegal where I’ll spend a couple weeks and will have some meetings about project sites there (the Senegal Ministry

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

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