TAMPA BAY: Federal manatee protection plans dropped

Last fall, new federal rules designed to protect manatees drew howls of opposition from Southwest Florida boaters, dock builders, developers, state legislators and Gov. Jeb Bush.

On Monday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dropped the proposed regulations, which would have offered heightened scrutiny of all dock permits from Pasco County down to the state's southern tip, while allowing the rest of the state greater leeway in waterfront permitting.

Bush, who warned the rules could devastate Southwest Florida's booming economy, hailed the decision to drop them.

"Today's decision confirms Florida's approach to protecting manatees works," the governor said in a written statement. "It also keeps manatee protection in the hands of state and local regulators who must balance the preservation of Florida's environment with economic prosperity."

The permit crackdown would have affected not only the Tampa Bay area but also some of the state's fastest-growing waterfront communities, including Naples and Bonita Springs, as well as the state's leader in boat-related manatee deaths, the Caloosahatchee River in Lee County.

Federal officials had estimated that the new rules would have meant that about 37 percent of permits from this part of Florida would be turned down, depressing property values, limiting boater access to the water and eliminating more than 200 jobs over the next five years. The annual economic impact was estimated at up to $43-million.

But economics did not play as big a role in Monday's decision as a new scientific report, wildlife officials said Monday.

The report, based on extensive computer modeling, suggests manatees face a bleak future if the boating-related deaths are not brought under control. Boats killed 95 manatees last year, a record.

The proposed rules depended on the manatee population in most of the state being healthy enough to stand the loss of a few to speeding boats. But the scientific study said that along the state's Atlantic coast and in Southwest Florida, the situation appears "dire," with no chance of the species recovering from its endangered status within 100 years.

Now, federal wildlife officials will continue to consider each permit application.

Applications in some parts of the state, including the Tampa Bay area, will still receive closer scrutiny because they are considered "areas of inadequate protection" because of problems with enforcing boating speed zones and development rules. Federal officials said they will work with state and local officials to cut back on manatee deaths in those regions and thus ease any permitting restrictions there sometime in the future.

The rules that were withdrawn Monday were one result of a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2000 by a coalition of 18 environmental groups led by the Save the Manatee Club. The suit accused the two federal agencies of being too lax in overseeing waterfront development throughout Florida, allowing the destruction of manatee habitat and putting too many boats into the state's waterways.

The settlement of that suit called for the federal wildlife agency to study whether it could put together new rules on permitting under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which would set a limit for how many manatees could be subject to "incidental take" - killed without harming the species.

But environmental advocates sharply criticized the rules that were proposed. They were not sorry to see them withdrawn, either.

Based on the scientific report, "they could come to no other conclusion," said Patti Thompson of the Save the Manatee Club. "The population is in such bad shape that allowing any incidental take would preclude recovery."

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