Money dispersed for manatee awareness
Manatees: they are the aquatic darlings of the conservation world…and it just so happens that Belize has the largest concentration of West India manatees in the region. To keep it that way a Belizean organisation long active in the protection of the marine environment was today charged with the task of giving the sea going mammals some extra help.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
Incidents of dead manatee carcasses washing up along the coast, particularly in the Belize City area, have spawned a vigorous effort to protect the endangered sea cow. The organisation Green Reef is one of the groups championing the cause of these gentle creatures, and today its executive director, Mito Paz, received thirty-five thousand dollars to continue its awareness project that spans from Corozal to Toledo and all cayes in between.
Mito Paz, Executive Director, Green Reef
“The money is going to be used to finish the campaign, and that includes activities that the environmental educator will be carrying out along the coastal communities of Belize. She will be dong some more school presentations to the kids and also she will be doing community meetings with the different stakeholders and the different communities.”
Paz says Green Reef, with funding from U.N.D.P’s Global Environmental Fund, the Protected Areas Conservation, Trust and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has been using every available means to deliver the message. Environmental Educator, Dilcie Patt, says that in the last two months alone, she has met with over fifteen thousand primary and secondary school children to tell them about the importance of protecting the manatee.
Dilcie Patt, Environmental Educator, Green Reef
“We’re hoping to continue with this educational programme throughout February, so we still have a lot of time to go with this manatee presentations. We carry along a mascot called Hercules the manatee, and we normally make these presentations very interactive with kids by allowing them to get hugs from Hercules, allowing them to get some prizes, for example, the pins I have. Or sometimes, when they answer the correct questions, we give them some beautiful posters, which have been designed by Green Reef. And these are some of the things that we give out to them within our presentations.”
Mito Paz
“It’s one of the species that’s endangered and it’s also one of the species that a lot of people like. It’s very gentle and it possesses a lot of threats too from nets, from pollution, from development, and also from boat traffic. And since Belize has the largest population of manatees for the region, we thought that this was going to be a good species to promote.”
Three wildlife sanctuaries specifically for protection of manatees have been created in Corozal Bay, the lagoons around Gales Point, and Port Honduras. And although she is impressed with the children’s enthusiasm when she visits the different schools, Patt says the impact of the campaign will really be visible in the years to come.
Dilcie Patt
“What we are expecting is that less manatees will be hit by boats or fishing nets or so that the manatee population increase in the next twenty-five, thirty years. So by carrying out this conservation message it will allow our Belizean waters to have more manatees.”
Patrick Jones, for News 5.
This was the third and final disbursement of a grant which totalled ninety-eight thousand, five hundred dollars.
