Brazil reviving endangered Amazon manatee

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2007

RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) — Brazilian scientists hope that two captivity-raised male Amazon manatees they plan to reintroduce to the wild will spark a bout of reproduction that might save the endangered species from extinction.

In February 2008 scientists at the National Amazon Research Institute (INPA) plan to take the two manatees (Trichechus inungis) and drop them into the Rio Cuieiras, a tributary of the Rio Negro, where researchers hope they will seek out females and begin repopulating the area.

"This is the first time in 34 years that we are organized to reintroduce the Amazon manatee into its habitat," INPA researcher Vera da Silva told AFP.

Despite being protected, the manatee population of the vast Amazon has steadily fallen with habitat loss, slow...