News

By Tiare Fridrich, Manatee Biologist

Save the Manatee Club (SMC) has partnered with the nonprofit wildlife rescue center RAREC—the Rainforest Awareness Rescue Education Center—in Iquitos, Peru, to help support their mission of rescuing and rehabilitating threatened Amazonian wildlife, providing community education, and furthering scientific knowledge that will help them preserve the Amazon rainforest. As a wildlife rescue center, RAREC rescues, rehabilitates, releases, and researches Amazonian manatees. Amazonian manatees are a species of manatee found in the Amazon River Basin. They are the only manatee species that lives exclusively in fresh water, though it is difficult to spot or study them because the Amazon River is very turbid. Recently, Save the Manatee Club helped RAREC fund the release of a rehabilitated manatee back into the Amazon River, and this animal was tagged with a radio tracker that will allow scientists to study the manatees movements after release. This will hopefully provide researchers with information on where wild Amazonian manatees go and why.

While the main threat to manatees in Florida is boat strikes, the main threat to Amazonian manatees is illegal hunting for their meat and blubber. Oftentimes, rescued manatee calves are orphaned because their mothers were hunted and captured, leaving the calves on their own. Manatee calves cannot survive without their mothers for the first two years of life and therefore need to be rescued. RAREC cares for these orphaned calves until the manatees grow large enough to be released. Along with supporting research, Save the Manatee Club has provided RAREC with funding to support upgrades to their manatee care facility so that they can care for more injured and orphaned manatees.

In recognition of our support, Save the Manatee Club had the honor of naming a newly rescued orphan calf at RAREC. The calf was named Newt—a tribute to the late, famous Olivia Newton John, who was a Club supporter. We look forward to updates on Newt’s growth and continuing to work with RAREC to support manatee conservation in Peru.