Table of Contents
What is being done to save the dugongs from extinction?
Whether in protection areas or not, take care to avoid injuring or distressing dugongs. Protect habitat: Avoid damaging seagrass an don’t drag boats over seagrass meadows. Take action to prevent pollutants, nutrients and herbicides from agriculture and other land-based activities flowing into creeks and rivers.
What we can do to save the dugongs and other endangered sea animals?
The endangered species can be saved Current and long-term monitoring of dugongs shows that their populations can be maintained or recovered by ensuring protection of their habitats, reducing their deaths due to fishing.
What is the conservation status of dugong?
Vulnerable
Dugong/Conservation status
The IUCN lists the dugong as a species vulnerable to extinction, while the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species limits or bans the trade of derived products.
Why should we save dugongs?
Why it matters Wherever they survive, dugongs play an important role in maintaining coastal ecosystems. Their constant browsing of seagrass encourages regrowth – ensuring critical habitat and feeding sites for a host of other marine species, including turtles, dolphins and sawfish.
Why are dugongs becoming extinct?
Dugongs are threatened by sea grass habitat loss or degradation because of coastal development or industrial activities that cause water pollution. This makes the conservation of their shallow water marine habitat very important. They also often become victims of bycatch, the accidental entanglement in fishing nets.
Why are dugongs going extinct?
Why do we need to save dugongs?
Wherever they survive, dugongs play an important role in maintaining coastal ecosystems. Their constant browsing of seagrass encourages regrowth – ensuring critical habitat and feeding sites for a host of other marine species, including turtles, dolphins and sawfish.
How long do dugongs live in the water?
A single adult dugong can grow up to three meters, weigh up to 500 kilograms and live for 70 years. Dugongs can remain underwater for 3 to 12 minutes while feeding and travelling.
Why are dugongs important to the Great Barrier Reef?
Their constant browsing of seagrass encourages regrowth – ensuring critical habitat and feeding sites for a host of other marine species, including turtles, dolphins and sawfish. So, healthy dugongs means healthy seagrass and broader Great Barrier Reef health. Dugongs can live for about 70 years but population growth is slow.
Which is the only other species of dugong?
Species of seagrass that are low in fibre and rich in nitrogen are a preferred source because they break up easily as they are pulled into the mouth. The only other known species to exist in the Dugongidae family was Hydrodamalis gigas – hunted to extinction in 1767, just 36 years after first being discovered.
Why are dugongs endangered in the Indian Ocean?
About Dugong Conservation. As dugongs need to surface approximately every 12 minutes for oxygen, they are susceptible to being struck by boats travelling at fast speeds, or travelling in shallows that are home to seagrass. They are also subject to drowning due to entanglement in commercial fishing nets.