Manatees endangered no more, biologists say

They recommend classifying manatees as threatened while projecting a 50 percent decline in their numbers by 2050.

By CRAIG PITTMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published October 8, 2002

ST. PETERSBURG -- While predicting that half the state's manatee population could disappear in less than 50 years, state biologists recommend that the seagoing mammal no longer be classified as endangered.

In a report cheered by the state's boating rights advocates and condemned by environmentalists, the staff of the Florida Marine Research Institute says the manatee qualifies only as a threatened species, not endangered.

"We're of course happy they're seeing it that way," said Jim Kalvin of the boating rights group, Standing Watch.

But Patti Thompson of the Save the Manatee Club said the recommendation showed how "politics trumps science every time." A record number of manatees have been killed by boats this year: 84 so far, with more than two months to go.

The recommendation still must be reviewed by a panel of scientists not connected to the state agency and adopted by the state's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The commission is scheduled to consider the change in January.

If the state approves dropping the manatee from the endangered list, Kalvin said, boaters will push for federal wildlife officials to follow suit.

The manatee's endangered status gives it legal protection that has resulted in action by both the state and federal governments to restrict boat speeds and waterway access. Those restrictions, pushed by lawsuits filed by environmental groups, have created a political backlash among boaters, who contend the restrictions have no scientific justification.

Last year a sport-fishing group, the Coastal Conservation Association of Florida, petitioned state officials to drop manatees from the endangered list. A 2001 aerial survey found more than 3,200 of them, double the estimated population of 30 years ago, so the CCA contended that the population is actually healthy and growing.

The report from FMRI found no chance of the manatee going extinct in the next century. However, it did find "a projected population decline of at least 50 percent over the next 45 years." It found that at least 20 percent of the population is likely to disappear in the next 30 years.

Nevertheless, under a new set of criteria that state officials adopted recently, that's not sufficient to qualify the manatee as endangered anymore. Instead, it fits the "threatened" designation.

Environmental groups have been lobbying state wildlife officials to change the criteria, contending they are so restrictive that not even Florida panthers would qualify as endangered anymore. They were particularly outraged in January when the commission, over scientists' objections, approved knocking the red-cockaded woodpecker down from threatened to "species of special concern."

Even the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has expressed "serious concerns" about the state's listing procedures, contending that applying them to the woodpecker would be a mistake.

The Florida Ornithological Society recently petitioned the wildlife commission to add the bobwhite quail -- popular among hunters -- to the state's list of protected species.

Instead the wildlife commission voted last month to consider revising its listing criteria again, but not for the woodpecker and manatee.

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