The manatee Juanita this Tuesday morning arrived at the waters of the Ozama River, just behind the Navy of the Dominican Republic. Officials from the National Environmental Protection Service (SENPA) attended the scene.
Dozens of people leaned out to pet the manatee, which experts don’t particularly recommend to their tracker.
Last Sunday, June 27 of this year, three manatees Juanita, Pepe and Lupita were released. This project, led by the Ministry of the Environment, the National Aquarium and Fundemar, marked a milestone in the conservation of the Antillean manatee, a critically endangered species.
Juanita, who had spent much of the time in Río Salado and on the coast near Bayahibe, had surprised herself by undertaking a long journey westward for just over a week.
He had traveled 84 linear kilometers from Bayahíbe, making several stops at the most important rivers in the area, the Cumayasa, Higuamo and the Soco. Concern gripped Fundemar, who monitor the animals, when they received a video of Juanita without her tracker. Losing Juanita’s location would make her monitoring almost impossible.
A person in the Soco tore the tracker off the animal, innocently thinking that it was a foreign object that had become entangled in its tail and decided to help it, he told Fundemar.
The Ministry of the Environment, Senpa and the Navy combined with Rita Sellares and Rachel Plekaniec from Fundemar, to search for Juana in the Soco river for two days without success. The idea was to try to put the tracker back on him.
The spirits fell as the hours passed and Juana was lost in the vicinity of the Soco river.
On Monday those responsible for monitoring received a call and a video from Juan Dolio, where Juana was seen near the beach, members of the Cestur and Armada alerted of the presence of the traveler while they followed up and protected, as they had done during the Juana’s journey from Bayahibe.
