Yahoo Finance Florida manatees no longer ‘endangered?’ When they’re dying in record numbers? | Editorial
Manatee deaths in Florida have reached the point of calamity in 2021. But that’s no surprise — almost a decade ago, there were already signs that our beloved sea cows were in trouble.
In 2013, manatee deaths reached 830, a sad record that has been broken in 2021. This year hasn’t even ended, and 942 perished as of Sept. 10, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. In the first four months of the year, manatee deaths had already surpassed the total for 2020.
This probably makes 2021 the worst year for Florida manatees since the state began tallying deaths in the 1970s. Save the Manatee Club Executive Director Patrick Rose told the Herald Editorial Board that he expects 1,100 to 1,200 manatees will die by the end of the year — most of them from a deadly combination of winter temperatures that force them to congregate in warm waters surrounding power plants along the east coast and starvation due to the decline of seagrass, caused by pollution.
Rose and other scientists are looking at 2021 with a somber feeling of, “We told you so.”
In 2017, despite their warnings, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the West Indian manatee, including its subspecies the Florida manatee and the Antillean manatee, were on a path to recovery. The agency downlisted them from the more serious category of “endangered” to “threatened.” The agency justified the move because of gains in population and habitat, but it was also under pressure from a petition filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to limited government that represented waterfront property owners in Crystal River, a West Coast manatee haven, as the Sun Sentinel reported Friday. Those residents weren’t happy with federal regulations in their back yard.
Congress should fix that premature decision with a bipartisan bill filed by two Florida lawmakers that would uplist the sea cows back to “endangered.” That’s important — with that classification comes more attention, funding and personnel dedicated to the animals. While the Fish and Wildlife Service said in 2017 the downlisting would not change recovery actions, Rose pointed out that, even before that decision, the federal agency already had scaled back on research and staffing to support the animals.
Normally, Congress shouldn’t be the tasked with changing animal listings under the Endangered Species Act. That should happen through a process that allows for the analysis of data on animal recovery and public input. But the Florida manatee’s plight calls for swift action. We don’t have time to wait for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to go through that lengthy process, which takes attention and time away from other environmental needs.
Animal welfare groups, such as the Save the Manatee Club and Animal Wellness Action, support the “Manatee Protection Act” filed by U.S. Reps. Darren Soto, D-Kissimmee, and Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key.
“In this case, we think it’s worth having an exception to right a wrong,” Rose said.
But simply passing a bill in Congress isn’t enough.
In the short term, Florida needs to have a plan for the winter and grow its manatee rescue program, which sends distressed manatees to rehabilitation facilities at the Miami Seaquarium, SeaWorld Orlando and other attractions. (Save the Manatee Club currently is talking to the state about increasing compensation for these organizations).
When temperatures drop, manatees will begin congregating in warm water, mostly along the Indian River Lagoon, a 156-mile estuary that stretches from Palm Beach to Volusia counties. About one-third of manatee deaths this year happened in the northern part of the lagoon along the Space Coast, where septic tank and urban pollution have killed 58% of seagrass, according to the Sun Sentinel.
Some manatees also end up near a power plant in Broward, the county with the fourth-largest number of deaths, 60. Miami-Dade, which isn’t normally a winter refuge, has 25.
The Florida Legislature allocated $8 million this year toward habitat recovery and restoring manatees’ access to springs. That’s a good start. Next year, state lawmakers should grant the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission’s request to hire around five new employees, Rose said, to work on necropsies, research and manatee recovery.
These are palliative measures, at best. Florida will continue to see manatees die unless it fixes its water-pollution problems, ranging from red tide on the state’s west coast to algal blooms plaguing east coast estuaries like Biscayne Bay, which hasn’t reached the point of collapse seen in the Indian River Lagoon, but where recent fishkills raise alarm.
That revival starts with helping water-management districts recover from massive budget cuts during the Great Recession and with Florida enforcing its existing environmental regulations, instead of helping polluters obtain permits.
True recovery will require an overhaul of how Florida has treated its waterways over the past decades, and that might be harder to achieve than simply placing manatees back on the endangered-species list. These unique creatures deserve resolute support to ensure that they can thrive, not just survive.
