For Immediate Release: November 10, 2003

Save the Manatee Club, Defenders of Wildlife, The Humane Society of the United States, and the Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida are moving to intervene today in a lawsuit filed in federal court by the city of Cape Coral, Florida against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (Service). The city of Cape Coral lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal actions seeking to strip the manatee of critically needed and hard won protections.

The city filed the lawsuit in late August to undo federal manatee protections that resulted from a settlement agreement between the conservation groups and the Service. That lawsuit follows on the heels of another federal case targeting manatee protections brought by the Florida Marine Contractor’s Association as well as on ongoing effort by a boating rights group to eliminate the manatee’s state classification as an endangered species.

"Not only must gentle manatees avoid speeding boats in order to survive, now they must survive multiple legal assaults as well," said Eric Glitzenstein of Meyer & Glitzenstein, a Washington-D.C.-based public interest law firm representing the groups moving to intervene in the Cape Coral case.

“Cape Coral is seeking to turn back the clock by eliminating new federal manatee speed zones in the deadly Caloosahatchee River and to allow unlimited boat dock building without requirements that manatees be protected, even as the threats from boats increase,” said Mike Senatore, an attorney for Defenders of Wildlife.

The city is challenging the new speed zones adopted by the Service on August 6. The city lawsuit contends that the boat speed regulations and delays in new boat dock approvals are hurting property values and Cape Coral’s economy.

“These are grossly inaccurate and blatantly misleading claims,” stated Patti Thompson, Save the Manatee Club’s Director of Science and Conservation. “Cape Coral has experienced record property value increases, with a 31% increase in just one year from 2001 to 2002.” According to the city’s own records, shoreline property values in the area increased dramatically during the period in which the city claims the permitting process was causing hardship to the region.

Cape Coral, a city with fast-paced growth, is the biggest contributor of boats to the Caloosahatchee River system, and the river has been the deadliest waterway in Florida for manatees because of boat collisions. While the Service adopted manatee protection boat speed zones as a result of efforts by the manatee advocacy groups, these groups stress that the zones adopted are a fraction of what the Service proposed as necessary to protect manatees.

The environmental groups find themselves in the unusual position of having to defend inadequate speed zones from further erosion – or worse – from being withdrawn altogether.

Ironically, the city’s lawsuit was filed after the Service gave the green light to over 700 boat slips on the Caloosahatchee River, most of which were within Cape Coral. Fifty-nine manatees have been killed by boats in the Caloosahatchee River in the last 13 years.

"The most recent scientific data indicate that the southwest Florida manatee population is in decline due in part to human-caused mortality," said Dr. Naomi Rose, marine mammal scientist for the Humane Society of the United States. "Manatee protection measures must keep pace with new development."

In addition to the Cape Coral case, the manatee is also under attack in another lawsuit recently filed by the Florida Marine Contractors Association (FMCA). In that case, the FMCA also seeks to expedite approvals for hundreds of new docks in manatee habitat, and also contends, bizarrely, that manatees should not be protected at all by the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act.

In yet another assault, because of a flawed state listing/delisting process and a petition from a boating group opposed to manatee protection, manatees may be approved for future downlisting from endangered to threatened in Florida later this month, despite a recent federal scientific model that stated "...if boat mortality rates continue to increase at the rates observed since 1992, the situation in the Atlantic and Southwest regions is dire, with no chance of meeting recovery criteria within 100 years..."