Officials ready to drop manatee from U.S. endangered species list

[Little Tich]

Source: Yahoo! News / Reuters

TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - The manatee, a species long considered at risk of extinction, has recovered in sufficient numbers to move from endangered to threatened status, U.S. wildlife officials said on Thursday.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to reclassify the protection status of the West Indian manatee, including a Florida subspecies listed as endangered since 1967.

The decision, announced at the Miami Seaquarium, reflects a finding that about 6,300 manatees live off the Florida coast today, compared with roughly 1,200 counted when aerial surveys began in the early 1990s.

Federal and state officials described the likely reclassification as good news for the whiskered "sea cow" popular among Floridians.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/u-regulators-decide-manatee-endangered-threatened-171058515.html

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Oh, the huge manatee!

[mcar]

2. Many of them winter in my neck of the woods

Fascinating creatures.

[Gumboot]

3. I used to live by the Indian River Lagoon...

... and I loved to go down to the power plant in Fort Pierce, where there was often a group of them basking in the cooling water outlet. They were so close to the dock, I could almost reach out and touch them.

So many got injured or killed by boat propellers in the Lagoon, but it's wonderful news to hear the population has recovered!

[exboyfil]

4. My daughter just finished a manatee project

for her Vertebrate Biology class. She also got to go to Florida over Christmas and saw some manatees yesterday. She will not be pleased about this development.

[glinda]

5. i thought that I just read something about drilling or something in an area that

is important to them. Just signed petition. So by dropping them off the endangered species list this gives more go ahead for such projects without the weight of thinking about species endangerment.

[alarimer]

6. The boating industry has lobbied hard for this.

Manatees are more in danger from boaters than from just about anything else and for years, the Florida boating industry (and power boaters) has lobbied against speed limits in canals that would help prevent collisions which injure and kill manatees every year.

I'm not happy about this move, if it happens. I don't think manatees are much in danger of drilling for oil, since they spend most of their time in rivers and near-coastal areas, while most of the drilling occurs farther offshore.

Manatees can also die off in large numbers due to cold spells and red tide events. So that 6300 number (which is good news) may not be much of a protection. Just a couple of years ago, almost 800 died. Some were thought to be killed by toxins in the seagrasses they were eating (which apparently is a different species than what they prefer- climate change impacts seagrass succession, just as it does for other organisms).

http://www.wired.com/2013/07/new-toxic-clue/

http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/11/04/worst-year-ever-manatees-2013

I just don't think you can remove them from the Endangered Species list when they are so vulnerable to mass die-offs.