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…
The WWF-France is fighting to save the dugongs from extinction in New Caledonia. Brut nature went over there…
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AnimalsTranscript
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.