Defenders' Experts
Media Contacts
Please direct media inquiries to:
State Downlisting of Manatees
Despite growing threats to the manatee’s long-term survival and overwhelming public opposition, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) voted in 2006 to downlist manatees on the state level from Endangered to Threatened status.
However, there is good news, for now. Years of efforts by Defenders and our conservation partners appear to have paid off when, at a December 2007 FWC meeting, the commissioners voted to defer the status change indefinitely while staff considers changes to the listing criteria.
Thanks to the hard work of the conservation community and Governor Charlie Crist’s office, manatees remain protected as an endangered species under Florida regulations.
Learn more about this success for manatees.
Background on State Downlisting of Manatees
Even though the state’s own research found that the manatee population might be reduced by as much as 50% within the next 60 years and that Florida manatees meet the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) definitions for Endangered, FWC maintained that manatees should no longer qualify for state Endangered status - but only because the FWC changed its listing/classification rules by adopting the IUCN criteria for Endangered and then calling it Threatened.
Defenders believes the listing criteria that were adopted by FWC in 2005 set extremely high thresholds for species to meet to be classified as Endangered, Threatened and Species of Special Concern. Our sign-on letter to the FWC Commissioners outlined our concerns about this and associated protections accorded to species. For years, these concerns were brushed aside by FWC staff and commissioners.
In May 2006, Defenders signed on to a petition for rulemaking with other organizations to try to convince the FWC to change the listing criteria to reflect more adequately the conservation status of species. Unfortunately, the FWC declined the petition and moved forward with the final phases of downlisting.
The FWC also claimed there was no reason to be concerned about changing the manatee’s status because their Management Plan will protect manatees no matter how, or even if, they are listed. We all know that politics works differently. Further, the Management Plan, adopted at the FWC’s June 2007 meeting, includes newly created Measurable Biological Goals that allow a 30% decline in manatee numbers and appears to claim that allowing such precipitous declines is acceptable. The adoption of the Management Plan completed the final phase of the process to downlist on the state level. All that was left was a final vote of approval by the FWC commissioners.
Fortunately, in September 2007, the FWC postponed the final downlisting vote, partly at Governor Crist’s urging (and partly because Defenders staff revealed the late-breaking news that the IUCN had just elevated the Florida manatee’s status). Then, at their December 2007 meeting, they voted to defer indefinitely the downlisting and directed staff to re-examine the state’s listing criteria. Defenders has been invited to participate in that process and we are already working to ensure that the criteria are science-based and accurately reflect the real world risks to manatees and all other imperiled species in Florida.
|
|
