Welcome to the
Save the Manatee Foundation Home Page

Mission Statement

The Save the Manatee Foundation is dedicated to protecting Costa Rica's remaining population of manatees in an around Tortuguero. Toward this end, the foundation sponsors visiting scholars and researchers to study manatees and help develop a manatee conservation plan for the area. The foundation also supports graduate students from Costa Rican and overseas institutions of higher learning. Working with the local community, former manatee hunters, and volunteer researchers, the foundation's goals are to ensure the survival of the West Indian Manatee in the lagoons, rivers and canals of northwestern Costa Rica through community cooperation and empowerment.

The Save the Manatee Foundation is organized upon the premise that academic interest in wildlife that may be threatened with extinction should also have the abiding obligation to use the results of academic study to provide solutions to the problems that cause the threats, thus helping to protect wildlife. The foundation is also committed to working with and hiring local residents to both study the situation and to assist and support community-based solutions. The foundation is supported by concerned community leaders. Community-based conservation and resource management, assisted by academic specialists, is a fast-growing successful approach to the conservation of endangered species and biodiversity in general.

Costa Rica's Manatees

Recently claimed to be extinct in Costa Rica, a population of manatees has been located in the rivers and lagoons adjacent to the world-renowned sea turtle nesting beach at Tortuguero National Park. Manatees are marine mammals as are whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, walruses, dugongs, sea otters and polar bears. Almost all marine mammals are threatened or endangered. Manatees are among the most endangered. Only a few small populations remain in isolated pockets over the West Indian manatee's (Trichechus manatus) once vast Caribbean-West Atlantic range -- the rivers, estuaries and coasts of northern South America to southern North America. The re-emergence (or rediscovery) of a manatee population is very significant --something akin to the return of "locally extinct" sea otters along the California Coast in the late 1930s.

Although manatees have returned to the area, they being sandwiched by a steadily expanding agricultural frontier to the west, and green turtle ecotourism from the east. Manatees are caught in the middle. Fast motor launches full of tourists heading to the beaches of Tortuguero race through the lagoons and rivers and collide with slow moving manatees. Pesticides used to control weeds and pests on nearby banana plantations kill fish and may be causing aquatic changes.

Looked at from another point of view, manatees are threatened by the end of the Cold War and species-based conservation. When the Iron Curtain fell, Costa Rican banana growers projected a surge in demand for bananas from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. They clear-cut forests in the eastern tropical lowlands of Costa Rica and pushed westward toward Tortuguero. They also lobbied hard for a road to connect Tortuguero with the rest of the country. The road was voted down by the local community, but banana growers have continued to push inexorably eastward. By 1994, 105,000 acres were planted in bananas. Growers are producing almost 100 million 40-pound boxes a year. To control pests and weeds, banana growers use nematocide, which washes into the rivers and lagoons.

Manatees are also threatened by conservation designed to save a single species: the green turtle. Tourist-packed fast motor launches speed up the canals from Moin to Tortuguero. Sometimes these boats hit manatees, but more importantly, they scare manatees away and relegate them to the backwaters of the park, where motorized boats do not go. Tortuguero's manatees, which were considered locally extinct less than two decades ago, have made a remarkable recovery, but we still do not know whether or not there is a viable population.

Tortuguero's strength lies in its isolation from the rest of Costa Rica. All travel to the region is by boat. In 1974, a series of canals were built to connect Limón and Barra del Colorado. In 1982 Tortuguero got its first electrical generator. Because of this isolation, Tortuguero is a close-knit community with strong cultural ties to the tropical lowland forest, waterways ,and turtle nesting beaches along the Caribbean Coast. Ecotourism has helped Tortuguero retain its cultural identity by providing employment to former turtle hunters who now guide tourists to the turtle nesting beaches. Manatees are another potential ecotourism attraction that can produce much needed revenue and jobs for the community. In addition, because manatees rely on the waterways behind the beach, protecting this habitat from encroachment by banana plantations and road construction will not only protect the environment but will also help keep Tortuguero's unique features --its isolation and cultural identity-- intact.

For more information please contact:

Fernando and Lilia Figuls		El Manatí Ecological Lodge
Owner, El Manatí			Tortuguero, Costa Rica
					506/288-1828 ph.
					506/239-0911 fax

Bernard Nietschmann			University of California, Berkeley
Professor of Geography			Department of Geography
					501 McCone Hall
					Berkeley, CA 94720
					510/642-0364 ph.
					510/642-3370 fax

David Smethurst				University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D. Candidate				Department of Geography
					501 McCone Hall
					Berkeley, CA 94720
					dsmethur@uclink3.berkeley.edu

We'd like to hear from you:
If you have any information about manatees, please drop us a line.

ocean-initiative@berkeley.edu 4/24/96