I love manatees. See my previous blog about them, as well as two articles I've written about manatees and manatee conservation. For Christmas my brother Michael adopted a manatee, Lenny, for me. As a result, I receive The Manatee Zone, a publication of the Save the Manatee Club, quarterly. I wanted to pass on some information from that publication here.
Manatees cannot survive in cold water, and thus rely on warm-water habitats which are being gobbled up at alarming rates. As of April 24th of this year, Florida has already lost 191 manatees (45 due to low temperatures and 33 to watercraft). That is an astonishing number. A record number of manatees (417) died in 2006, and by April 24th of that year only 154 had died, which means we could be setting a new record this year, and not one to brag about.
Good news: Legislatively, funding was secured to help acquire the Three Sisters Spring, a vital warm-water manatee refuge, as well as for the critical care program which rescues manatees in trouble.
However the battle is not over. Dade County has an excellent Manatee Protection Plan, which spurred the development of a committee which helped head off the downlisting of the manatee from the endangered species list. However, the Plan is always vulnerable to being opened for change, in order to allow room for development and increased boating access, which likely would affect critical manatee habitat.
If you are interested in conserving manatees, I encourage you to visit www.savethemanatee.org/action.htm to sign up for action alerts to keep you informed and allow you to take action on pertinent issues affecting manatees.
