Monitor Highlight

Colombia's International Monitoring Program (IMP) Regional Coordinator Ana Maria Escobar found an avenue for pursuing her lifelong interest in animal protection after joining whale scientists Drs. Jorge Reynolds and Roger Payne on a study of humpbacks off the Colombian island of Gorgona in 1990. This experience and later work with the World Society for the Protection of Animals led Escobar to pursue a master's degree for which she developed an environmental education program for the conservation of dolphins in Colombia.

In 1994, Escobar signed on with Earth Island Institute's International Monitoring Program (IMP) to monitor the Colombian tuna fishing fleet and processors.

She finds her work for the IMP "very gratifying" but faces "frustration in knowing that there are not enough measures to guarantee the safety of marine mammals in the oceans of the world, where politics and economics play the most important roles." Escobar acknowledges that the battle to make South America dolphin-safe will be extremely difficult. However, this is a critical region in terms of the international tuna trade.

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