Protecting the precarious manatee

For decades now, officials have had to balance the need to protect manatees with the goal of allowing people access to the endangered creatures.

[Times photo: Bill Serne] Every winter, manatees flock by the hundreds to the warm shallow waters in and around Kings Bay. The endangered sea cows have become a symbol for Citrus County, and their preservation is the focus of this year's Florida Manatee Festival.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 12, 2001

CRYSTAL RIVER -- The Native American author Lame Deer once questioned a country that would allow its national symbol -- the bald eagle -- to nearly reach the point of extinction.

"He asked what it says about a people when they fail to protect the symbols of their culture," said Jim Kraus. "I think we could say the same thing about the manatee."

Kraus, manager of the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge, sees how local residents love and revere the manatee that is the area's adopted mascot. All around, businesses use "manatee" in their names, paint murals of manatees on their buildings and promote tourism based on manatees and their place in the nature coast.

But the willingness of locals to do what it takes to protect the gentle creatures is sometimes in question.

Citrus County is a community where angry residents have been known to staunchly fight efforts to increase manatee protections on area waterways. At times, they've turned up in droves to question the motives of federal and state wildlife regulators and accused officials of being arrogant, uncaring and deceitful in their efforts to protect the resource.

Now, as the agencies prepare to propose still more restrictions on human interactions with manatees, those opponents have begun to surface again.

Kraus has the job of walking the difficult tight rope stretched between the two extremes. He must protect the manatee from harm while allowing enough interaction for people to gain the passion they need to keep the manatees around for future generations.

There is one thing both sides agree on. The manatee is Crystal River's golden goose.

"Manatees have put us on the tourism map," said Mary Craven, who coordinates tourism for Citrus County. "I'll go to state tourism meetings and be sitting with the heads of Universal and Disney, and I'll say I'm from Citrus County and they look at me. Then I say Crystal River and they say, "Oh, manatees.' "

She added, "It's pretty phenomenal. People look at me with envy. Wow, you're right there with the manatees."

That kind of recognition couldn't be purchased.

Although no one has accurate estimates, officials say tourists, drawn to the area by the manatees, spend millions of dollars annually at the area's hotels, restaurants, gift shops and diving businesses. In addition, some of those people come to visit and decide to stay.

"Today, if we did not have the manatees around, this would be a sleepy little burg that would not have the economic base we have now," Craven said. "A lot of people came here and bought their businesses here because of manatees."

Kraus said an even bigger issue is at play.

"The economic impact is one of the dimensions of what goes on," Kraus said. "But there is good reason to save manatees way beyond any economic impact. They are totally unique biologically. The are the most unique marine mammals of all."

Their ability to make themselves at home even in an environment crowded by humans is part of that uniqueness, he said.

"They can adapt to almost anything, learning to live so close to people, . . . but they cannot adapt to being hit by boats," Kraus said. "That gets down to the crux of the issue. We can modify our behavior, but they can't. We have choices. We can make a difference for the manatees and most people see that as worth doing.

"If we're going to keep them around, we have to."

Kraus said the community reaps the benefits of the manatees' presence and should also share the responsibilities.

"Everybody here from the civic officials to the businesses to the property owners, everybody here plays some kind of role in the stewardship of the manatees," Kraus said. "The manatee has been adopted as the symbol of our community."

For Kraus, the job at hand is clear.

"From our perspective, we have several federal mandates to preserve the species and protect the species," he said. "We get our marching orders from Congress. "The idea is to conserve these resources for the American people. If we screw this up now, we screw it up forever," he said. "There is value in passing these resources on intact.

Otherwise, how are future generations going to reflect back on the job that we did?"

The difficulty comes in deciding just how to accomplish what needs to be done.

In the early 1980s, residents organized to raise funds for a special project. After months of sitting out in front of businesses begging coins and dollars, they had collected enough money for the Nature Conservancy to purchase the islands around Kings Bay. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acquired the property and in August, 1983, the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge was established.

Soon after, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service created no-entry zones in the area called sanctuaries where manatees could retreat to eat and rest away from humans and boats. In the early 1990s, those were expanded.

Now, the agency is again considering tightening restrictions in Kings Bay and in the Homosassa River near the head waters in a place called the Blue Waters. The new restrictions on the drawing board are part of a statewide effort to provide more manatee protection. The efforts come at a time when state and federal agencies are being sued by environmental groups that accuse them of falling down on their job to protect the precious manatees.

Kraus said he wonders sometimes if people's toys, their boats and jet skis, have become more important than preserving the endangered species.

"We can succeed, at the Blue Waters and at Three Sisters Spring," he said. "The real trick is, are people willing to show some restraint, show self-policing?"

When people try to get more of a resource than their fair share, then everyone loses in the long run, he said.

"The common resource here is the manatee and when the concentration of activity impacts manatees to the point that there is a problem, then we have to respond to reduce or eliminate the threat," Kraus said. "We need the cooperation of everyone."

Much of the attention this time is on the Blue Waters, a shallow, confined area just outside the jurisdiction of the Homosassa Springs State Wildlife Park. Manatees gather there on cold winter nights to rest, and dive shop boats and rental boats descend in the mornings with tourists anxious to see and swim with the lumbering aquatic mammals.

Tom Linley, manager of the Homosassa Springs State Wildlife Park, has watched the situation at the Blue Waters escalate during the last several years. He has pushed the need to educate people more about the correct ways to interact with manatees. He moved no-entry zones out further into the river, but decided to pull them back in after area residents complained.

He has also thinks that a planned dredging of the already-closed area between the Blue Waters and the park border will provide a deeper, safe spot for manatees at least partly solving the harassment problem at the site. But that project is still a couple of years away.

Linley is convinced that something needs to be done there soon. "There is a bona fide, documented need for additional manatee protection measures in the Homosassa Blue Waters," he said. He thinks residents are finally coming to that realization on their own and that is why the most recent discussions about a Blue Waters sanctuary have not generated the same kind of vitriolic opposition as past attempts.

The need for the protection is evident from a tape produced by researchers several years ago. Scientists floated a small blimp over the area and videotaped for days. The tapes showed hours of the proper, careful interactions between people and manatees, which often flock there to sleep on cool mornings.

But there were also some blatant cases of harassment caught on tape, Linley said. The tape is so powerful that the Save the Manatee Club has discussed running portions as a public service announcement warning against manatee harassment.

"Of course the real solution is for people to be completely respectful of wild animals, regardless of their status as endangered or not," Linley said. "But obviously that's not happening."

Linley said the story hasn't changed since manatee protection first became an issue in the area. There are several different camps with different perspectives ranging from those who want the animals observed only from a distance to those who don't believe manatees need any more protection at all.

"You've got to find the middle ground," Linley said. "You need to be protective, but you don't need to take them away from people completely."

Local residents may find it easy to take the manatees' presence for granted, but tourists from all over the world recognize the animal's significance.

"People who live here have absolutely no idea how lucky they are," said Helen Spivey, co-chairwoman of the Save the Manatee Committee and a former state House and Crystal River City Council member.

Even after living side by side with manatees for more than 20 years, Spivey said she does not let herself become complacent about the special animals that call Crystal River home. "I'm absolutely awed by them," she said.

Spivey has fought for more manatee protections for years, earning the title of Manatee Lady by some. She is a strong advocate for doing whatever it takes, even if it is unpopular, in order to protect manatees.

"I think it would be a much poorer place, economically and emotionally, if manatees weren't here," Spivey said. "Crystal River would just be kind of barren without manatees."

She said the agencies charged with protecting manatees have to be successful. "When you've got something out there as big as a Volkswagen, it just doesn't make any sense that you can't save them," she said.

Linley agreed that manatees have created the flavor of this community.

"Why do people come to Citrus County? Why do they move here?" Linley said. "They come here because this is the heart of the Nature Coast, where you can get the conveniences of a modern city without all the hustle and bustle and you can still live in a natural setting. "Manatees are an integral part of that."

The manatees and the natural world they represent set the local agenda, he said.

"In our county, a lot of what we do is based on ecotourism," Linley said. "All the issues we deal with here relate to wanting to preserve the reasons we came here, whether that was 50 years ago or five months ago."

Kraus said the task of keeping the animals safe is daunting but worthwhile.

"The natural resources are the basis of having viable ecotourism," he said.

While there is a higher degree of environmental education available today than just a decade ago, Kraus said he still witnesses daily instances of ignorance about the laws concerning natural resources. That small percentage of people violating the rules threatens to ruin the wildlife viewing experience for everyone.

"We maintain an emphasis on education, but we also must have enough law enforcement presence to nail the five percent" who don't comply, Kraus said. "We have to get the public behind the establishment of dedicated funding to law enforcement, because we know we need additional resources."

Kraus said it is important to maintain a good relationship with the dive shops and the other businesses that profit from manatees.

"We are all in it together. If the manatee as a resource takes a downturn, then they all know what it would mean to them," he said. "But if people pull together and do the job that needs to be done to protect this animal, then we can all succeed."

You can help

Anyone who sees an injured or dead manatee or who sees manatees being harassed is asked to call the statewide manatee hotline number at (800) DIAL FMP (342-5367).

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