The WWF is fighting to save New Caledonia's dugongs

Brut America

This is one of the most astonishing mammals in the world. One of the most endangered, too.   The WWF-France is fighting to save the dugongs from extinction in New Caledonia. Brut nature went over there…

Transcript

00:00It's really an animal that, contrary to what we might think, has a very important grace

00:17when it is underwater.

00:18Here we call it the sea cow because it is an herbivorous animal that grows grass like

00:29terrestrial cows.

00:30It is really an animal that is strongly inscribed in the Caledonian and Melanesian culture

00:37in particular, which has a role in the custom with many stories and legends around this

00:46animal.

00:59It is an animal that has been hunted for a very long time and quite intensively, which

01:09means that it has disappeared from some countries completely, such as Mauritius for example

01:15or Taiwan.

01:16The Caledonian is really one of the absolute emergencies of species to protect.

01:22The IUCN classifies the sea cow as a species that is vulnerable on a global scale and this

01:27classification comes from the fact that there are still a lot of sea cows, there are a little

01:32more than 100,000 sea cows probably in Australia, but it does not really reflect the situation

01:37of the sea cow elsewhere in the world on its distribution.

01:40Here in Caledonia we still have the chance to have a few hundred and a few hundred

01:45place us finally among the countries that still host today among the largest populations

01:50of sea cows, far behind Australia.

01:57It is an animal that is hunted for its meat, since it is really a meat that is very much

02:24appreciated by the communities here, all the communities and which is therefore hunted

02:29for a very long time.

02:30It happened in particular during awareness-raising actions with children that some of them

02:35tell us in all innocence that they have already eaten meat from above when they were not even

02:4010 years old.

02:54In 2003, a first estimate of the number of sea cows was made in New Caledonia and showed

03:15that there were probably around 2,000, the latest estimates suggest that we are rather

03:20around 700-800, which suggests a rather significant decrease for a little over 10 years.

03:26This decrease is due to threats such as poaching, accidental fishing, collisions, which

03:35make that with such a reduced number of sea cows, the population is no longer able to

03:40renew itself.

03:41It is therefore necessary to strengthen the means, the efforts that will be dedicated to

03:45the protection of this animal to reduce all the threats that today make that this population

03:53is decreasing and could disappear within a generation or two.

03:56We can consider several types of actions to improve the protection of sea cows, whether

04:01through the creation of a marine air project dedicated to this animal, whether by reducing

04:07the speed of boats to reduce collisions in certain areas, but also by actively

04:13fighting poaching, by strengthening surveillance, by strengthening controls, and also by strengthening

04:19the awareness among communities in a very marked way, to ensure that they understand

04:23the urgency to protect the Lugon and that it does not disappear very quickly.

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