- Increasingly prolonged and intense droughts in the Amazon pose a deadly threat to the native Amazonian manatee, lowering river levels that expose these giant aquatic mammals to poachers.
- Conservationists warn that more frequent droughts will intensify manatee poaching, banned in 1967 (although manatee meat is still widely consumed across the Amazon) and still a major threat to the already vulnerable population.
- Experts urge stronger law enforcement to curb the sale and consumption of manatee meat, while conservation efforts focus on educating communities on the importance of the mammal to the biome.
- Despite the persistence of poaching, conservation and enforcement actions appear to have helped reverse the decline in the manatee population, although comprehensive population estimates aren’t available.
Amazonian manatees are an elusive species inhabiting the murky depths of the Amazon Rainforest’s rivers and lakes. They were able to endure the high temperatures of 2023’s historic drought that killed hundreds of river dolphins, but the low water levels posed a different danger. With less water to hide in, these mammals that can weigh up to half a ton become exposed to poachers who ramp up hunting during the dry season, killing manatees for their meat and further threatening the already vulnerable population.
“The drought represents an increase in the opportunities hunters have,” Anselmo d’Affonseca, a veterinarian at the Aquatic Mammals Laboratory (LMA) at Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA), told Mongabay. “Hunting is and always has been a very worrying factor with a major impact on the manatees.”
Hunting of Amazonian manatees (Trichechus inunguis) was banned nearly 60 years ago due to a significant population decline caused by the annual killing of 4,000 to 7,000 individuals between 1934 and 1954. Although younger generations in riverside communities have increasingly lost cultural ties to manatee meat, which has reduced demand, hunting remains a major threat that’s exacerbated by droughts, Mariana Paschoalini Frias, a conservation analyst at WWF-Brasil and coordinator of the South American River Dolphin Initiative, told Mongabay.
Manatee meat is “highly appreciated” in some parts of the Amazon Rainforest, according to d’Affonseca, and hunting presents an opportunity to make money; a typical manatee will yield two-thirds of its weight in meat. Law enforcement has mostly curtailed open trade in major cities, but manatee meat continues to be widely consumed in smaller, isolated towns, where monitoring is lax due to limited legal authorities and the social stigma of reporting neighbors in tight-knit communities.
Exact figures of the number of manatees hunted during the droughts are unknown. However, experts say that around 300 manatees were likely hunted in the Piagaçu-Purus reserve in the Brazilian state of Amazonas last year during the dry period, representing just a small rainforest area. No official data exist to confirm this, however, nor are there any statistics available on how many Amazonian manatees remain.
“It is almost impossible to estimate the population of manatees in the Amazon, because the rivers are very large and the waters are very dark. We have no way of counting them,” d’Affonseca said, although he added he suspects the population is recovering, based on the increasing number of baby manatees, or calves, being rescued in the last two to three decades.
Hunters often target manatees by first capturing the calf to lure in the mother. During the first two years of life, the calf is entirely dependent on its mother for suckling and learning how to surface for air, forging a strong mother-calf bond. When the mother attempts to rescue her captured young, hunters kill her and leave the calf behind.
“If calves are left alone, they have very little chance of surviving,” Renata Emin, a biologist and president of Bicho D’Água, an NGO that rescues and rehabilitates manatees, told Mongabay. It’s often community members who call environmental agencies that collaborate with rescue organizations to save the calves.
Rescuing the orphaned calves plays a key role in not only protecting the manatee population, but also safeguarding the ecosystems they inhabit.
Saving with rescue and education
“[The Amazonian manatee] is a sentinel species because it is extremely vulnerable to any change, disturbance or environmental changes that may occur in the region,” Frias said. “When an iconic species of the Amazonian fauna is affected, it is communicating a collapse much greater than just that of the species itself, but of an ecosystem that is suffering from heavy external pressure.”
To protect the current population against future threats, conservationists are applying a multipronged approach, including rescuing and releasing abandoned calves, monitoring the current population, and using environmental education to teach communities about caring for and conserving manatees.
In the state of Pará, where hunting is also a problem for manatees, Bicho D’Água currently has two calves in rehabilitation, one of which was rescued in March with one of its flippers amputated, likely from human activity. It’s currently in the veterinary hospital of the Federal University of Pará, after a joint rescue effort by Bicho D’Agua and Brazil’s federal environmental agency, IBAMA. Across the entire state, there are 50 manatees in rehabilitation.
“It is a very high number,” Emin said.
Rescuing manatee calves is usually straightforward, especially when it involves newborns, which are small and easy to retrieve from the water, d’Affonseca said. The real challenge comes when well-intentioned people try to rescue calves they mistakenly think are abandoned while the mother is actually nearby but hidden. To tackle this, INPA and the Friends of the Manatee Association (AMPA) started a campaign and created posters and a booklet to educate the public on avoiding unnecessary rescues.
Another challenge in rescuing manatees is preparing them for life back in the wild. The transition from rehabilitation to release requires acclimatization in a river pen. The longer a manatee stays in captivity, the harder it becomes to release it, as it risks becoming habituated to humans and developing behaviors that hinder its survival in the wild. At the moment, there’s just one acclimatization enclosure, in Santarém in Pará, but there are plans to open two more in Belém, the state capital, according to Enim.
“It is very important for the manatees that they go through this [acclimatization] step,” Enim said. “The calves need to understand the tides, the currents, and the bottom of the river where they feed. Released animals that went straight from the [rehabilitation] pools directly to the natural environment were less successful in adapting.”
In the state of Amazonas, AMPA, in partnership with energy company Eletrobras Eletronorte, INPA, and the Aquatic Mammal and Chelonian Preservation and Research Center, released five manatees in the Uatuma River in May. Through AMPA’s program, they have already returned 44 manatees to the wild, with more than 60 in the process of being reintroduced in partnership with the Sea World Foundation and other collaborators.
A key part of the success of returning manatees to the wild is the environmental education for nearby communities, carried out in the months leading up to the release. AMPA includes visits to schools in the Amazonas state capital, Manaus, as well as to riverside communities, to promote protection of aquatic wildlife and encourage community responsibility in preserving the environment. It helps get people onboard with looking after the manatees in the region.
Bicho D’Água also works closely with local communities, teaching them how to administer first aid to orphaned manatee calves. Given the vast distances in the Amazon and reliance on waterways for transport, this training can be a matter of life or death for the young manatees before rescuers can get there.
“It’s very important to have people, associations and community leaders who can provide first aid and inform our teams so that we can guide them, even from a distance, to ensure a successful rescue,” Enim said. “We really believe that this social mobilization and community engagement can contribute fundamentally to the conservation of the species.”
Environmental education is essential, but it must be accompanied by wider government support, conservationists say. AMPA, along with research agency INPA and its LMA lab, recently met with Amazonas state environmental agencies to plan out strategies to better prepare for this year’s potential low water levels. Stronger law enforcement action against hunting is also required to deter hunters and protect the remaining manatees, the LMA’s d’Affonseca said.
“The habit of consumption and trade of game meat is a reality in the Amazon,” he said. “The lack of enforcement ends up encouraging people to kill the manatees to sell their meat.”
Banner image: An Amazonian manatee in a zoo. Image by Chris Muenzer via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
You can’t see them to count them, but Amazonian manatees seem to be recovering
FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.
Credits
