Environmentalists are now turning to the federal courts to protect the marine habitat of Florida’s manatee population, which suffered a record number of deaths last year due to mass starvation.
Groups including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Save the Manatee Club filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia this month to force the U.S. Food and Wildlife Service (FWS) to update habitat protections for the Florida marine mammals to ensure their survival.
“In 2021, more than 1,100 Florida manatees died due to cold-related stress, starvation, boat strikes and toxic red tides,” the complaint states. “This reflects approximately 13% of the manatee’s estimated total population and is more than double its five-year annual mortality average.”
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has been working to set up feeding stations to help the manatees survive the winter months, but Patrick Rose, the Save the Manatee Club executive director, said such programs are not a permanent solution for the species.
“In the short term, there is a lot being done, but these are just stop-gap measures,” Rose told the Florida Record.
Other efforts to help the manatees at the state level include tributary habitat restoration, water-clarity improvements and oyster bed restorations, he said, but they’re no substitute for action by both the FWS and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
“We tend to look at lawsuits as an absolute last resort,” Rose said, adding that the inaction of the federal agencies forced environmental groups to act.
Save the Manatee Club joined the FWS lawsuit because the federal agency agreed to upgrade the habitat rules for the manatee in 2010. Eleven years later, those standards had yet to be upgraded.
In addition, the FWS has down-listed the manatee from endangered to threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act, exposing the species to numerous environmental threats, according to Rose.
Save the Manatee Club and other groups have also vowed to sue the EPA to get the agency to reassess water quality standards in Florida to better protect the species. The environmentalists link wastewater treatment discharges and fertilizer runoff with threats to the manatees’ food supply, suggesting that the EPA needs to take steps to tighten water-quality standards for substances such as nitrogen and phosphorus.
Further preventable manatee deaths are expected this year due to malnutrition resulting from losses of seagrass, according to Rose.
“We’re in the middle of a pretty bad (continuing) mortality event and have had probably over 150 manatees die as a result of those complications this year,” he said.