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Sunday, March 5, 2006

Gentle manatee sparks angry debate

By VIRGINIA SMITH | News-Journal Staff Writer

TALLAHASSEE — It’s one of the great ironies of Florida life that the manatee, arguably the state’s sweetest-tempered denizen, is the source of some of its nastiest conflicts.

Even basic facts about sea cows — whether there are too many or too few, whether they’re still endangered and why, whether the protections in place work — remain hotly contested among environmental, boating and development interests.

Yet as the state prepares its case to downlist the manatee from “endangered” to “threatened,” it needs all the agreement it can muster from these interests.

State and federal wildlife agencies pay about $10,000 a session for a professional negotiator, in an effort to get them to agree about something, anything.

But it’s been slow going. It took the manatee forum, as these sessions are called, nearly a year to agree that manatees are native to the state of Florida. The parties represented don’t have much history of agreeing. For 25 years they’ve disagreed, and in the last five — ever since a group of environmentalists sued the government — they’ve really slugged it out.

“Look at it. Think about it. Does it look like there might be some areas where we have interests in common?” began negotiator Brett Boston, pointing to a board on which he’d scrawled a list of topics: Aquatic habitat. Seagrass protection. Water quality. Springs protection.

To the members of the manatee forum, some 11 environmentalists and 11 hobby and industry reps who meet every few months to hash out their problems, these topics weren’t as cut-and-dried as they seemed. In fact, they were loaded.

To say polluted storm water is bad for manatees might seem like a no-brainer to some; to others, it sounded anti-development. Hands flew up. “This is a growth-management tool, not a manatee issue,” one member complained. “If we’re not about protecting manatee habitats, I don’t know what we’re here for,” snapped another.

Boston is the president of Group Solutions Inc., a firm that untangles the knottiest issues imaginable — before coming to Tallahassee last month, he was in Louisiana, drafting a plan among multiple industries and government agencies for flood control, coastal restoration and hurricane protection.

It’s the type of negotiation that involves billions of dollars and hundreds of people. Which would seem, on the surface, a good deal harder than figuring out the needs of a slow-moving marine mammal.

Boston says it’s not. The manatee forum’s members “have been doing better, socially — they’re even starting to sit in different places around the table,” he said, and they’ve been seen exchanging pleasantries over lunch. “But they’ve been fighting for so long.”

One question on Boston’s agenda last month was this: Should manatees be downlisted from “endangered” to “threatened” under state law?

It was, upon further reflection, too incendiary a topic. There could be major civility relapses. At the last minute, Boston struck it from the agenda.

But state wildlife officials think the manatee should be downlisted. They don’t think it qualifies as endangered anymore. They made a case to downlist manatees in 2003, but postponed any more action until they had better science.

Now, they say, they have that science and they’re prepared to carry it through — starting this summer. At a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission meeting in June, commissioners are expected to vote “yes” to a downlisting.

Federal officials, too, are reviewing the endangered status of the manatee, and may follow suit with a downlisting of their own.

A change is in the air, and everyone at the forum knew it. There was happiness in some corners, bitterness and suspicion in others. Half the room regarded the move as long overdue — the other half as a naked concession to dock builders and boaters.

The state and feds, by hosting the forum, “are keeping us busy while the really bad stuff happens,” said one environmentalist.

But what would a downlisting actually mean — for the manatee, for development, and for boaters?

That, no one seemed to know.

A LOT, OR NOT

Much of today’s confusion over manatees might be avoided if scientists had a time machine. If they could only learn how many manatees existed before human settlement, they’d have some idea how many manatees should be swimming right now in Florida waterways.

Alas, manatees were hunted by American Indians, probably for millennia, and the European settlers embraced the practice with vigor.

In 1893, there were so few manatees left that Florida outlawed manatee-hunting. In 1939 the state began fencing off manatee breeding grounds. Manatees have been protected under federal law since 1972, and a sweeping state law in 1978 launched regulations on boats, which cause a quarter of all manatee deaths.

And though, in the years since, manatees are believed to have rebounded somewhat, it’s impossible to know what their natural abundance was — 1,000 manatees, or 3,000 or 10,000.

Since 2001, annual aerial surveys have shown around 3,000 manatees in state waters. And since not all the manatees can be seen during a survey, that’s a minimum count.

It’s a figure that some manatee advocates, like the Maitland-based Save the Manatee Club, either dismiss as irrelevant or portray as shrinking: “There are approximately 3,000 West Indian manatees left in the United States” the club says on its Web site. Six years ago, a coalition led by the club sued both the state and feds, accusing them of not enforcing their own manatee-protection laws.

They won, in effect — the suit was settled, and manatees got more protection. But they alienated a few people in the process. To the Coastal Conservation Association of Florida, a recreational fishermen’s group with environmental leanings, 3,000 manatees looked like an increase, since earlier counts showed less than half that number. And the fishermen on the water had been seeing more manatees for years.

In 2001, the association petitioned the state to review the manatee’s endangered status.

Ted Forsgren, the association’s executive director, said it was a reaction to the lawsuit’s bold claims. “We petitioned to get the truth out, to let the public know the true status of the manatee,” Forsgren said. “The Save the Manatee Club was saying they were on the brink of extinction.”

The state ordered the review. But then it postponed any decision on downlisting. And then, it jiggled the categories a bit.

NAME GAME

In Florida, an animal can be “endangered,” “threatened,” or a “species of special concern.” Each category represents a certain risk of extinction, and each carries strict scientific guidelines.

Last year the state aligned its guidelines to match those of the IUCN-World Conservation Union, a Swiss organization considered the world authority on endangered species.

Match, that is, except for one important thing. The union uses four categories: “Critically Endangered,” “Endangered,” “Threatened” and “Vulnerable.”

Florida, which has historically used only three categories, eliminated one. It made its own “endangered” category equivalent to the union’s “critically endangered” — which means a species would have to lose 80 percent of its population, or have fewer than 250 animals left, to qualify. Florida’s “threatened” category, meanwhile, is the same as the union’s “endangered.”

So if Florida had adopted the union’s names, manatees would still be considered endangered under the latest scientific review. But they didn’t, which has environmentalists seeing red. “The criteria ought to match,” said Manley Fuller, president of the Florida Wildlife Federation.

And though there’s not much difference in the protection afforded to “threatened” and “endangered” animals in either state or federal law, “perception is reality,” said James Powell, a biologist with the Wildlife Trust in St. Petersburg. “By international criteria, manatees are endangered. To not call them that is misleading to the public. I think that’s doing a disservice to manatees.”

In some quarters, a change in perception is welcome. “Downlisting sends the message that this thing’s not on the brink, and it will defuse some of the hype,” said John Sprague, president of the Marine Industries Association of Florida. “The hype has gotten in the way of millions of people enjoying the water.”

Sprague and many boating advocates hope the downlisting will also spark a review of speed zones, to see where they are and aren’t working.

Judith Vallee, executive director of the Save the Manatee Club, predicts a downlisting will be followed by incremental setbacks. “We firmly believe that the rules guiding development treat species differently when they’re not called endangered. Two weeks ago in Brevard County, there was a proposal to roll back speed zones. The press release about the downlisting had just come out.”

It’s possible, Vallee said, that enforcement dollars could be redirected elsewhere, and budgets for manatees could shrink — even without changes to the laws. Revenues from specialty license plates, boat registrations and donations account for most of the $4.2 million the state spent last year on manatees. “With downlisting, people will assume manatees have been recovered.”

Manatees’ recovery “is undeniable,” said Perran Ross, a University of Florida biologist who has worked extensively for the state on manatee issues.

“The Save the Manatee Club’s concern seems to be twofold — that the public isn’t smart enough to believe ‘threatened’ is a valid concern, and that by changing an animal’s status, we reduce its protection. I strongly refute that.

“Misguided people will probably try and remove protections,” Ross said. But the state “will have to screw its courage to the sticking point and refuse them.”

FUTURE RISKS

“If you’re in the hospital, you’re in the ICU, and you get moved to a recovery unit, you’re not being mistreated,” said Kipp Frohlich, head of the state’s Imperiled Species Management Section.

Yet some think that if manatees aren’t in the ICU anymore, it wouldn’t take much to put them back there. Recent years have also shown spikes in manatee deaths, from boat strikes, red tide, and natural causes — despite longstanding protections like speed zones and sanctuaries.

Manatee advocates say that’s all the more reason not to downlist them. Their opponents say more deaths are the logical consequence of an increase in manatees.

But there’s one threat on which both sides can agree: If power plants go offline, manatees are in big trouble. Large groups of manatees aggregate every winter around plants that release warm water. With their historic South Florida refuges either gone or severely altered by development, and where there are no natural springs like Blue Spring State Park, power plants are it.

A large number of manatees depend on these refuges — and may or may not be able to find an alternative when aging plants go offline.

“The big, big question mark is warm water,” said Wildlife Trust’s Powell. “If there is any substantial change in warm water, there will be a lot of manatees that die and populations are gonna shift. Will they go back to their natural distribution? If they can’t, where are they gonna go? If that’s gonna happen sometime in the near future, how can we talk about downlisting?”

A downlisting would, however, require the state to draft a formal management plan for manatees — which it doesn’t currently have.

Such a plan would be complex, taking months or even years to write — and the downlisting can’t be finalized without it. The plan would have to deal, in some way, with nearly every potential threat to the manatee.

And it would require some consensus from the stakeholders.

“There’s been a huge increase in the ability of the stakeholders to talk,” said Ken Haddad, head of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “We hope this results in a good management plan.”

Last month, as the two-day session of the manatee forum came to a close, two of its members — Save the Manatee Club’s Vallee and the Marine Industry Association’s Sprague — bothered to address each other directly.

“What happens after we reach recovery? I think your expectations are that regulations will be lifted,” Vallee said.

“Absolutely not,” Sprague said. “That would take the animal right back to where it was.”

There was nodding all around. It was something.

What it Means

Environmental, boating and development interests have reached virtually no common ground in 25 years of talking about manatees. But state officials want to change the animals’ classification from “endangered” to “threatened” and are hoping for consensus on how to protect the species in the new era.

The Manatee Debates: Sticking Points

POPULATION NUMBERS

Recent annual aerial surveys have shown upward of 3,000 manatees in state waters. To many boaters’ groups the higher counts are incontrovertible evidence of a growth in the statewide manatee population, since counts in the early 1990s showed only about 1,500 manatees.

Manatee advocates and many scientists believe the counts have resulted in a false sense of optimism about how sea cows are faring. They say the increased counts are at least partly the result of better counting methods. To accurately measure how a population is doing, they say, it’s necessary to have proof of high adult survival rates and birth rates.

The criteria used by the federal government to determine manatee recovery does not set population quotas, but rather a 90 percent survival rate for adults, documentation of a flat or increasing population and 40 percent of adult females nursing calves in winter.

RESEARCH

Boating advocates would like far more research into whether speed zones are effective, what types of boats and propellers are most harmful to manatees and whether there are technologies that would help avert collisions between boats and sea cows. They also have funded some research on red tide control and have accused manatee advocates of lacking concern about red tide, a major killer of manatees.

Some studies have been conducted into manatees’ hearing abilities, research that some believe could lead to collision-reducing devices. Because research dollars are finite, manatee advocates are not keen to put money into solutions that, in their estimation, place the burden of protection on the manatees themselves.

POPULATION AREAS

Two of the state’s regional manatee populations, Northwest and St. Johns, are growing. The Atlantic population is thought to be level at best and the Southwest population, which gets hit hard by red tide, is declining slightly. The federal government program insists that survival and reproduction rates meet the 90 percent/40 percent standard for all four groups to be considered recovered. Some industry advocates believe the state’s manatee population should be assessed as a whole, not region by region.

HABITAT

Manatee advocates are particularly concerned with protecting warm-water springs, taking as little water as possible for human consumption and retaining natural flows. Natural springs will become even more important in the future, when artificial sources of warm water, like power plants, disappear.

Some members of the development and boating community have long pegged manatee advocates as anti-growth, and claim that some efforts to preserve habitat are really growth management tools.

Moments in Manatee History

Mid-1800s: Manatee meat sells for 50 cents a pound in Florida, according to observers

1893: Manatee hunting banned in Florida

1907: State imposes $500 fine, and/or six months in jail, for harming a manatee

1966: Manatee makes federal government’s first endangered species list

1967: First biological studies of manatees in Crystal River

1971: Jacques Cousteau documentary, “The Forgotten Mermaids,” publicizes plight of the Florida manatee

1972: Federal Marine Mammal Protection Act imposes $20,000 penalty for harming a manatee

1973: Manatees listed under the Federal Endangered Species Act, requiring concrete steps for management and protection

1978: State passes Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act, regulating boat speeds in 13 areas

1981: Save the Manatee Committee was formed by Gov. Bob Graham and singer Jimmy Buffett

1989: Gov. Bob Martinez requires 13 counties, including Volusia County, to develop manatee protection plans.

1990: Save the Manatee license plate established, funding manatee research and law enforcement. County speed-zone rules established in three counties.

1991: Volusia County adopts speed zones

1992: Save The Manatee Club, an offshoot of the Save the Manatee Committee, incorporates as a nonprofit agency, raises own funds for lobbying and education.

1994: Fossil manatee ancestor found in Jamaica.

1995: Chessie the Manatee, normally a resident of Florida, finds himself in Rhode Island, turns around

2000: A coalition led by Save the Manatee Club sues the state and federal wildlife agencies, plus the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for actions deemed harmful to manatees and for failing to protect manatees. New speed zones, construction rules and sanctuaries result.

2001: State receives petition to downlist manatee from “endangered” to “threatened.” Annual manatee count finds 3000-plus manatees in state waters.

2003: State postpones decision on whether to downlist manatees, orders more studies

2005: State changes its listing criteria, raising bar to qualify as “endangered.”

2006: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission expected to approve downlisting process at June meeting.

SOURCE: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, News-Journal Research.

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