A Much-Deserved Reprieve For Florida's Manatees

Florida's manatees are protected for now, thanks to Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

On Dec. 5, the wildlife commission postponed indefinitely a proposal that would have weakened the manatees' protection status from "endangered" to "threatened." The proposal was being pushed by Florida's insatiable growth machine - a machine that has left too many scarred manatees in its wake.

The wildlife commission, with four new Crist-appointed members, made a common-sense decision to protect our official state marine mammal.

Crist weighed in the day before the historic vote, saying that if the commission lowered the manatee's protected status, "it would not please me."

"More importantly," the governor said, "it would disappoint the people of our state."

This is real leadership. No one makes money off protecting manatees. It's simply a moral obligation for humans to protect Florida's creatures and marine environment. For too long, the manatees have lost out to the money and political influence of development interests.

Developers and high-speed boaters have been fighting to weaken protections for manatees because they want fewer restrictions when they seek waterfront-building permits. And some boaters are apparently in such a hurry that they can't deal with slowing down to avoid running over grazing sea cows.

Let's ask this question: Who benefits from developing and boating so haphazardly that the very marine environment we all enjoy gets wiped out? It's a balancing act, and the wildlife commission and the governor have, thankfully, recognized that.

Keeping the manatee on the list of endangered species is nothing to celebrate. But the alternative is worse - removing protection for a species that has, at the most, 3,000 individuals remaining in the wild. Most Floridians support protecting the manatees that remain in our waters.

Those of us who are advocates for this imperiled species have been pushing for wise management during the past two years, ever since the wildlife commission changed the yardstick for manatee protection by altering the definition of "endangered."

That bureaucratic change is the reason that the manatee's status came up for a vote this year. It wasn't due to some giant leap in the number of manatees in the wild.

It is important to understand that under the state's new criteria, a species would have to undergo, or be at risk of undergoing, an 80 percent population decline in order to be listed as endangered. Once a species has lost 80 percent to 90 percent of its numbers, you are talking about an emergency crisis. It would be difficult and costly to recover - if it could be saved at all.