It’s been awhile since I’ve written about Victor, the orphan manatee being raised in Gabon. Unfortunately there’s been a setback in his care that has resulted in his losing quite a bit of weight. Last winter and spring, Victor’s local caretakers were left on their own to do their job without supervision. They had been fully trained and knew their job, so it shouldn’t have

I think the Eaux et Forêts (Water and Forestry) Ministry building in Libreville is the coolest government office building I’ve ever seen; it was clearly modeled after the Weebles tree house kids used to play with in the 1980’s! Complete with the Weeble-like giant plastic flat-topped trees out front. I like the sense of fun this building exudes. It’s just ironic that everyone inside it

After the workshop I accompanied Heather and Cyrille out to their ecotourism site on Lac Oguemoue for a few days. Even though it’s dry season and I didn’t expect to see manatees, I’d never been to most of the large lakes off the Ogooue River before, and it was a chance to talk to local people and see the habitat. Although many of the lakes

From September 2-6 I held a manatee training workshop in Lambarene. There were 12 participants from 6 organizations (including Oganisation Ecotouristique de Lac Oguemoue (OELO, Gabonese NGO), World Wildlife Fund, Gabon Fisheries, Gabon Water and Forestry, University of Dschang, Cameroon and African Marine Mammal Conservation Association, Cameroon). Five of the participants were women, the highest number I’ve ever had in a workshop to date. Lectures covered manatee

With my Gabon research permit in hand and a week of meetings completed, I was finally ready to leave Libreville on 31 August. My Cameroonian colleagues Aristide and Rodrigue had flown in from Yaounde and met me in Libreville. I’ve written about Aristide before, he’s leading manatee research in Cameroon, starting the country’s first marine mammal stranding network, and training other Cameroonian students in manatee

I’m flying to Gabon on Thursday, my first trip there since 2011. After a short stay in Libreville to get my permits and have some meetings, I’ll be heading to Lambaréné in the interior. I haven’t spent time in Lambaréné since 2006 and it’s an important place as the unfortunate center of manatee hunting for Gabon. Lambaréné sits on the mighty Ogooue River and lies west of a

Some good news for the start of the week: I received notification from the Society for Marine Mammalogy that I’ve received a student travel award to attend their conference in New Zealand next December. I’ll present some of my African manatee genetics dissertation work as a poster, and I also hope to give a talk at the Sirenian Workshop before the conference. Also, my colleague

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