Released: July 12, 2002

Advocates for Florida’s endangered manatees hailed a recent U.S. District Court ruling that found the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was not providing adequate refuges and sanctuaries for the species, as required under the terms of a 2001 legal settlement.

"This ruling is a shot across the bow of the Bush Administration, which has flagrantly violated the manatee settlement in a host of ways. The Court has made clear that it will not sit idly by while Gale Norton and her cohorts trample on their legal duties to protect an endangered species," noted Eric Glitzenstein of Meyer & Glitzenstein, the lead attorney representing the coalition of manatee supporters that had won the settlement agreement.

The Fish and Wildlife Service said that it had avoided implementing measures to reduce collisions with boats that kill dozens of manatees every year, in order to allow the state of Florida to implement its own protections. Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the Federal District Court in the District of Columbia ruled that no such delay was allowed under the settlement, and that potential state action did not excuse the federal government from acting, especially in places where the state does not intend to enact manatee protections. Glitzenstein noted that the state was making no efforts to protect manatees in some of the areas where mortality is the highest, including Lee, Collier, and Duval counties. Lee County set an all-time record for manatee deaths from boat strikes last year, and is on a similar pace in 2002.

“It’s amazing the lengths this administration will go to in order to avoid protecting manatees and other endangered species when industry asks. The Interior Department was in clear violation of the law, entered into a settlement agreement that Secretary Norton almost immediately violated under political pressure, and now it takes a second court order to force them to comply,” said Michael Senatore, litigation director for Defenders of Wildlife. Judge Sullivan’s ruling made special note of the role that politics appears to have played in the Fish and Wildlife Service’s violation of the settlement agreement.

“Finally, in addition to violating the Agreement by failing to designate a sufficient number of refuges and sanctuaries throughout peninsular Florida in the agreed upon time, defendants have arguably violated the agreement by delaying the rulemaking process with respect to the other 14 proposed areas until December 1, 2002... As plaintiffs have pointed out, no justification has been offered for this delay other than Governor Bush’s request to allow the state to proceed alone with respect to manatee protection in Florida. Whatever the political ramifications, such a justification cannot excuse a violation of the Agreement to designate areas throughout Florida by the date established by the Agreement,” Judge Sullivan wrote.

"This is a very big victory for manatee protection," said Patti Thompson, Save the Manatee Club Director of Science and Conservation. "Since our lawsuit was settled 18 months ago, we have had a series of frustrating delays, during which time manatees did not benefit from the better protection the settlement was meant to provide. Now we have something we can hang our hopes on."