MENTOR-Manatee

African manatees occur in 21 countries on the African Atlantic coast and the interior countries of Mali, Niger, and Chad. They face significant threats in the wild, including poaching for bushmeat and accidental capture in fisheries. A basic lack of knowledge about their distribution, behavior, and ecology has been a hindrance to conservation efforts for this unique species. Recognizing the need for manatee research and conservation in Central Africa, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) launched a MENTOR-Manatee Fellowship program in 2015 under leadership of Dr. Lucy Keith Diagne, who has been at the forefront of African manatee research and conservation since 2006.

Eight Fellows from three countries - Cameroon, Gabon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo - were selected to participate in the three-year MENTOR-Manatee program. Six of the Fellows are enrolled in academic programs and two are professionals who lead non-profit conservation and research organizations in their countries. All are conducting their own manatee research and conservation activities. Together, they also focus on the accurate documentation of manatee hunting and the bushmeat trade in manatees, and on increasing manatee educational outreach programs for schools and the public.

As a group, the Fellows come together for month-long sessions where they participate in training, team building, manatee fieldwork, and conservation activities. Each of these sessions is held at one of the Fellow's manatee field sites, allowing the team to learn first-hand about threats in a variety of locations and under local conditions. The MENTOR-Manatee program is building a network of Central African wildlife professionals who can lead research and conservation efforts, reduce illegal manatee bushmeat exploitation at local and regional levels, address international wildlife trafficking of manatee parts, and run educational campaigns focused on the manatee throughout Central Africa.

The MENTOR Fellowship Programs are a series of programs that combine rigorous academic and field-based training, long-term mentoring, experiential learning, and project implementation to develop transdisciplinary teams of emerging African conservation professionals to address threats to wildlife.

Since 2008, the Service supported MENTOR programs on the bushmeat trade in eastern Africa, forest conservation in Central Africa, manatees in Central Africa, chimpanzees in West Africa, and pangolins in Central Africa. After graduating from MENTOR programs, Fellows have gone on to play important roles in government and non-governmental organizations leading wildlife training centers, implementing innovative wildlife law enforcement efforts, and conducting applied wildlife research to inform policy.

