Hope floats in the Amazon as Bacuri, a young manatee, fights for survival

Deep in silence, as if under a spell, children watch intently as Bacuri, a young Amazonian manatee, glides around a small plastic pool.When he surfaces for air, some of them exchange wide smiles.

The soft rustle of rainforest leaves punctuated by bird song adds to the magic of the moment.The children from riverside communities traveled for hours by boat just to meet Bacuri at the Ferreira Penna Scientific Base of the Emilio Goeldi Museum, Brazil’s oldest research institute in the Amazon.Despite their endangered status, manatees are still hunted and their meat illegally sold, and they are increasingly threatened by climate change. Environmentalists hope that by engaging local communities, Bacuri and others like him will be spared.The Amazonian manatee is the region’s largest mammal but is rarely seen, much less up close.The reasons for this are twofold: The manatee has acute hearing and will vanish into the murky water at the slightest sound, and its population has dwindled after being overhunted for hundreds of years, mostly for its tough hides that were exported to Europe and Central America.To help the manatee population recover, several institutions are rescuing orphaned manatee calves, rehabilitating them, and reintroducing them to the wild.Bacuri weighed just 22 pounds — a fraction of the more than 900 pounds of an adult manatee — when he was rescued and taken to the federally protected Caxiuana National Forest.He was named after the local community that found him.

Two years and several thousand milk bottles later, Bacuri has grown to about 130 pounds.Three institutions are responsible for his care.The Goeldi Museum provides facilities and educates nearby communities.

The federal Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation assigns two staffers for 15-day shifts to feed Bacuri three bottles of milk a day, as well as chopped beets and carrots, and clean the pool every 48 hours.The nonprofit Instituto Bicho d’Agua — meaning institute of ...