African Manatee Training Workshop in Djenne, Mali (Sorry, I would’ve liked to have posted this earlier, but we are having constant power outages in Dakar!) During the last week of November, I led a manatee research and conservation training workshop with 11 participants from 4 countries (Mali, Niger, Chad, and Ivory Coast) in Djenne, Mali. This is the first time I’ve run a workshop on […]
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Mali: Sevare and Mopti In mid-November we spent the Tabaski holiday in Sevare with our colleague Semega’s sister and her family. After that we met up with Abdoulaye Guindo at his office. He’s the Niger River Basin Authority manager here. Abdoulaye attended the training workshop I co-led in Ghana last year and it was good to see him again! He’s hoping to start manatee research
Mali: Bamako to Sevare On Tuesday morning we drove out of a smoke-filled Bamako as everyone began preparing to cook their sheep for the Tabaski holiday the following day. Once we left the city the air cleared and we drove through an area of very cool rock formations, then into a zone of lush forest, then finally into a Sahelian scrub landscape that became drier
Mali: Bamako It’s been a busy and interesting few days in Bamako. After arriving last Thursday, Tomas and I met up with one of our Malian colleagues, Alfousseini, who took us on a grand tour of the city. The city is defined by the Niger River which passes through on it’s long journey from the mountains of Guinea, north through Mali, Niger and Nigeria on
Enroute to Maliimage courtesy of whatgives365.files.wordpress.com Tomorrow morning I’ll travel from Senegal to Bamako, Mali to work with manatee colleagues Alfousseini Semega and Abdoulaye Guindo, and see their manatee study sites in the inland Niger River delta. Later in the trip I’ll also lead a week long manatee research and conservation training workshop for African colleagues, very similar to the ones I taught in Ghana
Senegal: On the trail of a dead manatee Last June an adult female manatee died in a narrow lagoon called Mbodiene. I try to follow up on all of these reports since any information we can gather adds to our sparse knowledge of the species. This manatee was particularly interesting because it had been seen alive with 2-3 others several days before it died, and
Building new partnerships This past week I traveled south to Saly and met with Dawda Saine, a manatee researcher from the Gambia who I have been talking to on email for awhile. Dawda is very enthusiastic to get manatee field research started in his country, so we took the opportunity of his attendance at a fisheries workshop here in Senegal to meet and talk about
French Version of the Manatee Necropsy Manual / version française du manuel de nécropsie des lamantins For manatee researchers:We are happy to announce the completion of a French version of the Manatee Necopsy Manual originally written by Bonde, O’Shea, and Beck in 1983. In this French version we updated datasheets to French versions that are currently in use in Francophone Africa, as well as some