The objective of our program is to protect and promote the recovery of the Mediterranean Monk Seal colony which is located on the coast of the Cap Blanc Peninsula in Mauritania. The following is a brief description of the animal that we work with.
The Mediterranean Monk Seal is one of the ten species of mammals most at risk of extinction around the world. It belongs to a group known as the pinnipeds, which also includes marine species of sea lions, fur seals and walrus. Seals as a group may, in turn, be classified into two sub-groups: northern seals, a set of ten species that live mainly in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic zones, and the seals in the monachinae group, which include the species that live in the Antarctic and in sub-tropical regions. This is where we find the genus monachus, to which the Mediterranean Monk Seal belongs.
In the year 2000, the CBD-Habitat Foundation began to work on the Cap Blanc Peninsula, as part of the Action Plan for Conservation of the Mediterranean Monk Seal in the Eastern Atlantic (CMS/UNEP), with the sole objective of recovering the monk seal population on the Seal Coast in Mauritania.
Since then, two important achievements have been made:
Fishing gears detected in and out the reserve
Data taken from the marine surveillance