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Guest column

State should revise imperiled species classification

By PATRICK ROSE
Published June 5, 2006

Conservation and animal welfare groups from Florida and around the nation have petitioned the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, urging the state to revise its imperiled species classification system.

Using this flawed system, the FWC has already downlisted the red-cockaded woodpecker, despite opposition from many scientists. If the current classification system is not changed, many of Florida's at-risk species, such as the manatee, northern right whale, Florida panther and Florida black bear, could suffer the same fate as the woodpecker, resulting in less protection and misleading the public into thinking these species have recovered.

Florida is rapidly being developed, increasing the threats to wildlife and making not only survival, but also the state's goal of endangered species recovery, an enormous and difficult challenge. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in five years Florida will surpass New York in population, making it the third most populous state in the nation.

In 1999, the FWC modified its classification system to incorporate the listing criteria of the World Conservation Union, a world authority on endangered species, except for one critical difference. Modifications were made in 2005, but the changes failed to fix this major flaw.

The FWC did not align the IUCN's risk categories with the IUCN's category names and definitions. Therefore, the IUCN's critically endangered category became the FWC's endangered category. The IUCN's endangered category became FWC's threatened category. The IUCN's third category of vulnerable is considered the FWC's species of special concern.

A species losing nearly 30 percent of its population over 10 years probably would not even make it onto the species of special concern list. Until it adopts a classification system that matches IUCN's or develops a new system that adequately protects wildlife from habitat loss, the FWC should delay any species' reclassifications that recommend a lesser status of imperilment.

Manatees, injured and killed by human activity each year - especially from boat strikes - are listed as endangered under both federal and state law. However, after a state review was conducted using the present flawed classification system, the FWC is set to downlist manatees to threatened status in June.

State biologists have said the manatee population could decrease by half in the next 45 years from rising threats to its long-term survival. If the FWC had adopted the IUCN's classification system, the manatee would continue to meet the criteria for endangered status.

The FWC's decision to upgrade the gopher tortoise and other species whose risk of extinction is rising must not be delayed. Because the gopher tortoise meets the exceedingly high threshold for upgrading in the state's current classification system, it is clearly in need of greater conservation attention. The tortoises' upland habitat is quickly being converted to development around the state. Thousands of tortoises have been entombed below ground as subdivisions and shopping malls cover them over.

As an example of one of the criteria, under the current classification system, a species would have to undergo, or be at risk of undergoing, at least an 80 percent decline in its population in order to be listed as endangered. For slow-maturing species, such as sea turtles that take up to 35 years to reach reproductive age, recovering a population that has declined by 80 percent would be extremely difficult.

"Animals such as these warrant full protection long before an arbitrary 80 percent threshold is reached; by then the situation would be critical, and saving species in emergency situations is nearly impossible," said David Godfrey of the Sea Turtle Survival League.

The classification system was created to guide the state's management efforts in conserving and recovering imperiled species. "As species like the manatee are reclassified to a less imperiled status before their populations have actually recovered, state funding for research, management and law enforcement will likely be directed elsewhere, preventing full recovery," said Martha Collins, the groups' attorney.

Many of Florida's species will be downlisted or even delisted, not because their biological status has changed, but simply because the listing criteria used by the FWC has changed. All we are asking through our petition is for the FWC to reconsider their listing criteria and afford Florida's imperiled species the proper protections they deserve.

Patrick Rose is the director of government relations for Save the Manatee Club. Guest columnists write their own views on subjects they choose, which do no necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.

[Last modified June 5, 2006, 01:13:06]