Review History and Conservation Status of the Antillean Manatee Trichechus Manatus Manatus in Hispaniola

Review History and conservation status of the Antillean manatee Trichechus manatus manatus in Hispaniola H AYDÉE M. DOMÍNGUEZ T EJO Abstract To summarize the state of knowledge of the En- Mignucci-Giannoni, ), largely as a result of past uncon- dangered Antillean manatee Trichechus manatus manatus trolled hunting throughout the Wider Caribbean Region. in Hispaniola, which comprises the Dominican Republic In addition to hunting and fisheries bycatch, manatees are and Haiti, I reviewed documentary archives from pre- also subject to collisions with water craft, chemical and Columbian times to . Manatees were historically abun- noise pollution, habitat degradation and habitat loss, dant in Hispaniola but were hunted for centuries for their among other threats, because they inhabit freshwater and meat and other body parts for diverse uses. By the end shallow coastal marine environments heavily used by people of the th century manatees had become relatively rare (Reynolds & Marshall, ; Self-Sullivan & Mignucci- around the island. Nevertheless, manatees remain wide- Giannoni, ). In most countries of the Wider Caribbean spread along the coast and occasionally occupy freshwater Region, remnant populations of the species are small and habitats in the Dominican Republic. In Haiti recent manatee declining (UNEP, ). Such is the case for the sightings were restricted to two coastal areas. Currently, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which share the island of manatee population of Hispaniola is perceived to be declin- Hispaniola, between Cuba and Puerto Rico (Fig. ). ing. The most commonly reported threats to the species Historical data can be used as a baseline reference to include hunting, entanglement in fishing gear, boat strikes assess the current status of species (Pauly, ; Swetnam and disturbance by boat traffic, pollution, and habitat de- et al., ). No formal records of catch data exist to re- gradation and destruction. In the Dominican Republic long- construct past manatee population sizes and trajectories in standing national laws and international agreements protect Hispaniola. However, manatees were hunted by the original the species and its habitat, and past conservation actions inhabitants of the island and archaeological studies pro- have raised public awareness about the status of the vide insights into manatee distribution and aboriginal uses manatee. In Haiti knowledge of manatees is extremely (e.g. Fewkes, ; Miller, ; Krieger, ; Miller, ). limited and the species is not legally protected. I propose Manatee bones have been found at archaeological sites in country-specific and binational recommendations to im- the Dominican Republic dating as early as BCE (Veloz prove the contemporary conservation of manatees in the Maggiolo, ). At the time when the Spanish arrived in Dominican Republic and Haiti. the West Indies in the late th century, the most dominant of the Indigenous peoples of Hispaniola, the Taíno, manu- Keywords Antillean manatee, conservation status, distribu- factured luxury and ceremonial objects carved from mana- tion, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Hispaniola, historical data, tee bones and other materials (Cassá, ). The Spanish Trichechus manatus manatus word for manatee comes from the Taíno word for breast, Supplementary material for this article is available at manatí, a term they presumably adopted from the Cariban https://doi.org/./S languages (Arrom, ). During the conquest and colo- nization of the West Indies the eastern part of Hispaniola was primarily a Spanish colony and the western part a French colony. Manatees were considered an extraordinary Introduction and tasty fish, and descriptions of manatees were not un- common in accounts of European voyagers in the –th he Antillean manatee Trichechus manatus manatus,a centuries (Durand, ). Nevertheless, only a limited Therbivorous aquatic mammal, is categorized as number of these historical documents were included in Endangered on the IUCN Red List (Self-Sullivan & regional reviews (Lefebvre et al., , ) and management plans for the West Indian manatee (UNEP, , ), and pertinent literature about Hispaniola written HAYDÉE M. DOMÍNGUEZ TEJO (Corresponding author, orcid.org/0000-0003- 1356-3454) Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, Centro de Investiga- in Spanish and French was excluded. Recent information ciones de Biología Marina, Avenida Alma Mater, Ciudad Universitaria, Santo about manatees in Hispaniola remains dispersed and mostly Domingo, Dominican Republic. E-mail [email protected] ’ *Also at: Duke University, Beaufort, USA unpublished, hindering the assessment of the species status and the development of recovery plans to improve its Received August . Revision requested November . Accepted February . First published online December . conservation. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, Downloaded fromdistribution, https://www.cambridge.org/core and reproduction in any medium,. IP address: provided 170.106.33.19 the original, work on 01 is Oct properly 2021 cited.at 05:18:19, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/termsOryx, 2021, 55(2),. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605319000140 284–293 © The Author(s), 2019. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605319000140 Antillean manatee in Hispaniola 285 FIG. 1 Manatee sighting records in Hispaniola (Supplementary Fig. ), with specific rivers and locations mentioned in the text. In Haiti, a former manatee river, point, bay and township were located within the enclosed area near Port-au-Prince. To document what is known about Antillean manatees Dominican Republic, the first sighting was recorded in the in Hispaniola, identify knowledge gaps, and recommend log of Columbus during his first voyage to America, when relevant conservation actions to protect the manatee popu- he sighted three ‘sirens’ in January near Río Yaque lation in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, I reviewed del Norte, on the north-west coast (de Herrera y Tordesillas, historical and contemporary information on the species in ;deCharlevoix,; Fernández de Navarrete, ; English, Spanish and French. Documentary archives from Hazard, ; de las Casas, ;Baughman,;Husar, three time periods were reviewed: the pre-Columbian era ). In his general history of the West Indies, ( BCE– CE), – CE, and – CE FernándezdeOviedoyValdésmentionedthatmanatees (Supplementary Material ). A comprehensive database of grazed on the banks of Río Ozama (the river that bisects manatee sighting records in Hispaniola was compiled and Santo Domingo city), where many large manatees were analysed (Supplementary Material ). My aims are to con- harpooned from boats and canoes (Fernández de Oviedo tribute to: () an update of the assessment of the West y Valdés, ). The missionary de Acosta ate manatee Indian manatee for the IUCN Red List (Deutsch et al., ), meat in Santo Domingo in c. (de Acosta, ; () updates of the Regional Management Plan for the West Baughman, ; Husar, ; Lefebvre et al., ). Two Indian Manatee (UNEP, ), and () future national unworked manatee ribs were recently recovered from the manatee recovery plans of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. – Tile Wreck on the north-west coast (ADMAT, ; Supplementary Material ). On the south-west coast, Distribution Walton ( ) sighted a manatee near Isla Beata. According to de Charlevoix (), manatees were more Iobtained manatee sighting records around Hispaniola common in Etang des Gonaïves (Gonaïves lake), on the from the documentary archives reviewed, the majority (%) central coast of Haiti, than in any other place in Hispan- for the Dominican Republic. Twenty-four pre-Columbian iola (Fig. ). Moreau de Saint-Méry (), mentioned that records ( BCE– CE), comprising manatee teeth and un- manatees were frequently caught in Port-de-Paix and worked bones, bone utensils, amulets or idols and ceremonial Port-à-Piment, on the north and south coasts of Haiti, objects, were found at archaeological sites distributed respectively. This author also mentioned several natural throughout the Dominican Republic (Fig. , Supplemen- features or places named after manatees that suggest they tary Fig. ). Four pre-Columbian records of manatee bone were common in an area near Port-au-Prince: Rivière fragments and utensils were found near Fort-Liberté in the Lamantin, Pointe Lamantin, Baie Lamantin and Canton north-east of Haiti (Rainey, ; Rouse, ; Fig. ). du Lamantin (a manatee river, point, bay and township, There were five manatee sighting records in each country respectively; Fig. ). Today, a manatee lighthouse (Phare for – CE (Fig. , Supplementary Fig. ). For the Lamentin) and two manatee streets (Lamentin , and Oryx, 2021, 55(2), 284–293 © The Author(s), 2019. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605319000140 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.19, on 01 Oct 2021 at 05:18:19, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605319000140 286 H. M. Domínguez Tejo TABLE 1 Details of the studies dedicated to the manatee Trichechus manatus manatus in Hispaniola. NR indicates the technique was used but the value was not reported; a blank cell indicates the technique was not used. Effort (h)1 Sighting records2 No. of coastal

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