Putting CITES Protections into Practice in West Africa

AWI is following up on the successful efforts to obtain international trade protections for the imperiled West African manatee under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), achieved at the CITES Conference of the Parties in March in Bangkok (see Spring 2013 AWI Quarterly). AWI’s graphics team, working in conjunction with the Species Survival Network and a manatee scientist, has developed an educational poster targeted at local coastal communities in the West African range nations. The aim of the poster is to encourage local communities to protect manatees, by highlighting the threats they face, banned activities, and ways to help conserve them and their habitats. French and English versions of the poster are to be distributed across the range states through local conservation networks.