Waterfront municipalities of the St. Lawrence turn to Quebec elementary school students to find names for their belugas

QUEBEC, Jan. 28, 2015 /CNW Telbec/ - The contest Our Beluga's Name is… invites elementary school students throughout Quebec to find names, before March 20^th 2015, for the 10 belugas adopted by some forty waterfront municipalities of the St. Lawrence under the Adopt a Beluga campaign. The contest is launched today at the request of the mayors of these municipalities by the Groupe de recherche et d'éducation sur les mammifères marins (GREMM), in partnership with the Fondation Monique-Fitz-Back, Le Cœur des Sciences and the movement des Établissements verts Brundtland (EVB-CSQ).

The cities of Montréal, Québec City, Lévis, and Tadoussac as well as a clustering of the towns of Beauharnois, Chateauguay and Salaberry-de-Valleyfield each adopted one beluga. Additionally, some thirty (and counting) other municipalities joined the effort to "solidarily" adopt five belugas. These "solidary" belugas are paired with one of five broad sectors dividing the province along the course of the St. Lawrence.

A simple but fun contest, an activity of discovery

In order to come up with a name for the beluga of their sector and/or of their municipality, students are to draw their inspiration from each of the adopted belugas' unique stories, which are chronicled in the family album found on the contest's web-based platform: notrebeluga.org. The students are invited to familiarize themselves with the species' situation through a special feature prepared by the magazine Les Débrouillards. For each name proposed, students must explain their choice and may also submit a text, drawing or audio/video clip to articulate why it is important to save the belugas. The contest is open to all students attending francophone and anglophone elementary schools in Quebec. Thanks to the support of the Fédération des commissions scolaires du Québec, the activity will be distributed to school teachers throughout the entire province. The deadline to participate in the contest is March 20, 2015 and the names of the belugas adopted by the St. Lawrence waterfront municipalities will be unveiled on April 15, 2015.

"With the Our Beluga's Name is… contest, we wish to tie bonds between belugas and every school in the province", fantasizes Robert Michaud, GREMM's scientific director and coordinator of the St. Lawrence Beluga Project, while reminding us that "like the students of a classroom or the citizens of a city, every beluga that inhabits the St. Lawrence has a story all its own and by better understanding their stories, we can better protect them and better share the St. Lawrence with them."

Belugas in need of friends: an invitation to the general public and businesses

The plight of the St. Lawrence beluga is increasingly worrying. Its population is declining once again and its status went from "threatened" to "endangered" last fall. The general public and businesses are also invited to take part in the Adopt a Beluga campaign. The web-based platform adoptezunbeluga.org can be used, amongst other things, to participate in a collective adoption or to form a group to adopt a beluga.

About the Adopt a beluga campaign

The Adopt a beluga campaign was launched last fall with the help to the Fondation de la faune du Québec to support the Saint-Lawrence Beluga Project, projetbeluga.org, a long-term research and monitoring program on belugas and the St. Lawrence ecosystem conducted since the early 1980s and coordinated by the GREMM, gremm.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to research on the whales of the St. Lawrence and marine conservation education.

Note : High-resolution photos and videos are available for download
Video: http://lc.cx/758
Photos and images : http://lc.cx/75X 
Photo and video credits : © GREMM

SOURCE Groupe de recherche et d’éducation sur les mammifères marins (GREMM)

Media contacts, Josiane Cabana, GREMM, Tel : [phone]; Jean Robitaille, EVB-CSQ, Tel : [phone], poste 3122; Benoît Mercille, Fondation Monique-Fitz-Back, 418 523-8585 p. 225