Opinion-Editorial
For Immediate Release: January 1, 2007

Save the Manatee Club has nothing but praise for federal, state, and local law enforcement officers who participate in expanded on-water enforcement efforts to protect endangered manatees, such as the recent concerted enforcement effort, Operation Mermaid, which spanned 11 Florida counties.  But the question is whether such enhanced efforts to protect the manatee population will continue, and at what level. 

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s (FWC) recently released draft of their Manatee Management Plan, which is the final step in lowering the manatee’s classification on the state’s imperiled species list, allows a 30% decline in the population over 3 generations.  Such a catastrophic loss is effectively being sanctioned by the state and will be absolutely unacceptable to Floridians and people around the world who care about these unique and defenseless animals.  And since the Plan is geared toward avoiding greater than a 30% loss rather than attaining  an optimum sustainable population, it will be impossible to hold the state accountable for protecting manatees from escalating human-related threats such as watercraft strikes, loss of warm-water habitat, and destruction of habitat associated with development and climate change.  Such a drastic loss in the population will be viewed by the FWC as progress toward species recovery – as their Management Plan states – so it follows that the agency can significantly roll back protective regulations and still be able to declare success by simply avoiding a greater than 30% population loss.

In the last 10 years, over 3,100 manatees have died from all causes, with over 760 of those animals killed by boats.  The population can’t possibly continue to sustain mortality of this kind.  The FWC should give manatees the highest level of state protection, and certainly now is not the time to be lowering the manatee’s imperiled status to Threatened.  Although I draw hope from recent statements by Rodney Barreto, chairman of the FWC, attempting to clarify the Commission’s commitment to manatees, to the contrary, the Manatee Management Plan as written still allows for a 30% population decline while declaring success.  Should this remain acceptable to the FWC, what will be their motivation to reduce the present level of mortality?
 
We encourage the public to contact Governor Crist and, in light of the record-setting manatee mortality and a management plan that is critically deficient, urge him to use his influence to get the FWC to revisit the state’s new imperiled species classification system that will result in the downlisting of numerous rare Florida species, including the manatee.  His e-mail address is charlie.crist@myflorida.com, or he can be reached by phone at 850-488-7146. 

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