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.