Press Release: Feds agree endangered Florida manatees need more habitat protection

For Immediate Release

• Defenders of Wildlife • Center for Biological Diversity • Wildlife Advocacy Project • Save the Manatee Club
January 12, 2010
Contact(s) Elizabeth Fleming, Defenders of Wildlife, (727) 410-0455 Miyoko Sakashita, Center for Biological Diversity, (415) 436-9682 x 308 Eric Glitzenstein, Wildlife Advocacy Project, (202) 588-5206 Pat Rose, Save the Manatee Club, (407) 539-0990

Feds agree endangered Florida manatees need more habitat protection
Despite finding, protection is indefinitely delayed

FLORIDA – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that new critical habitat protections are warranted for Florida’s endangered manatee, but the agency will wait for increased funding before it takes action. The notice, published in today’s Federal Register, is in response to a petition to revise the manatee’s critical habitat filed by Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity, Save the Manatee Club, and the Wildlife Advocacy Project. According to the petition, revised habitat protections are warranted based on a vast body of science developed over the past three decades, which has better identified the areas essential to the survival and recovery of manatees, as well as the important features of each area.

“While we are pleased that the Service has again acknowledged the Florida manatee’s need for updated protections, the fact remains that this acknowledgment won’t actually help the species,” said Patti Thompson, a leading manatee biologist and co-author of the petition for the Wildlife Advocacy project. “We stand by the science in our petition and we stand by our call for prompt action to protect this iconic Florida animal."

The Florida manatee was one of the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act and among the first to have critical habitat designated for protection. These protections have helped slow the decline of manatees and promoted their conservation, but manatees still face a host of threats, and new habitat protections are urgently needed.
"Today's decision to withhold critical habitat protections puts the Florida manatee in an administrative purgatory," said Miyoko Sakashita oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Endangered species don't have much time to wait for bureaucracy, and the last stand of precious habitat may be developed or destroyed while manatees await needed protections."

Manatee habitat is threatened by a variety of factors, such as: Coastal development, propeller scarring and seagrass damage, dams and other water control structures, and pollution and marine debris, including derelict fishing gear. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, more than seven times the sustainable level of Florida’s manatees are killed each year by human activities, including vessel collisions. This past year was an especially deadly one for the Florida manatee – setting a new record with 429 manatee deaths in state waters. Records were set for cold stress-related deaths (56), watercraft-related fatalities (97) and 114 newborn deaths.

“With this year’s record deaths and looming threats, the species clearly needs all the help it can get,” said Elizabeth Fleming, Florida representative for Defenders of Wildlife. “Despite the Service’s determination on critical habitat, we will continue to work for any and all protections that will stop these tragedies and ultimately help the species recover.”

“Much is at stake regarding the appropriate designation and protection of the endangered manatee’s critical habitat, upon which countless other sensitive aquatic species also depend for their very existence,” said Patrick Rose, Save the Manatee Club Executive Director and manatee expert. “We are committed to working with the USFWS to ensure that the money is found to both update the designation and to reduce the out of control, record breaking watercraft and total mortality that manatees endured during 2009.”

Today’s announcement means that the Fish and Wildlife Service, despite recognizing that critical habitat designation would benefit the conservation of Florida’s endangered manatee, will most likely put off any action indefinitely.
“With manatee deaths at an all-time high, it is unfortunate that the Service has relegated this vitally important rulemaking to the backburner indefinitely, said Eric Glitzenstein, President for Wildlife Advocacy Project. “The Service should instead be embracing it as an important opportunity to stem the ever-increasing tide of manatee moralities and injuries.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 225,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. For more information, visit http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/.

Defenders of Wildlife is dedicated to the protection of all native animals and plants in their natural communities. With more than 1 million members and activists, Defenders of Wildlife is a leading advocate for innovative solutions to safeguard our wildlife heritage for generations to come. For more information, visit www.defenders.orgSave the Manatee Club was established in 1981 to protect manatees and their aquatic habitat for future generations and today, it is the world’s leading manatee conservation organization. The Club is a membership-based, national nonprofit organization that promotes public awareness and education; sponsors local and international scientific research and rescue, rehabilitation, and release efforts; and advocates for the conservation of manatees and their essential habitat based on the best available scientific data. For more information, please visit http://www.savethemanatee.org/

The Wildlife Advocacy Project is a non-profit advocacy organization that seeks to complement and supplement the efforts of grassroots wildlife protection activists to win long-lasting conservation benefits for animals and the planet. It pursues its mission through publication education and science-based advocacy, and urges recognition and respect for the innate wild nature of all wildlife, whether in the wild or held in captivity. For more information, visit www.wildlifeadvocacy.org.

Interior Department's decision imperils wolves, Endangered Species Act

By Jamie Rappaport Clark Friday, January 1, 2010

"[T]oday, I've signed a memorandum that will help restore the scientific process to its rightful place at the heart of the Endangered Species Act, a process undermined by past administrations. . . . For more than three decades, the Endangered Species Act has successfully protected our nation's most threatened wildlife, and we should be looking for ways to improve it -- not weaken it."
-- President Obama, March 3

I felt distinct relief upon hearing those words. I was at the Interior Department in March when President Obama made this promise to an audience of conservationists on the 160th anniversary of the agency's founding. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was by his side.

After eight years of conservation groups fighting tooth and nail to protect America's imperiled wildlife against the plans and rulings of the Bush administration, it looked as though the Obama administration would renew our commitment to conserving endangered species and biodiversity for future generations.
But this relief was short-lived.

Just three days after the president pledged to strengthen and restore scientific integrity to implementation of the Endangered Species Act, Secretary Salazar removed federal protection from gray wolves in the Northern Rockies. In making this decision, he adopted the plan developed by the Bush administration, relying on a flawed legal opinion crafted by that administration. His decision has undermined the protection of the gray wolf and countless other threatened and endangered species.

This misguided action places wolves squarely in the cross hairs of their opponents across the Northern Rockies, allowing as many as 1,050 of Idaho and Montana's estimated 1,350 wolves to be legally killed and jeopardizing the 30-year recovery effort to restore wild wolves to the region. As a result of Secretary Salazar's action, wolves in the Northern Rockies are being hunted prematurely. Already, 210 have been killed, and there are still three months left in the Idaho hunting season.

I work with an organization that is among the 13 conservation groups that have taken this issue to court. In September, a federal judge indicated our case is likely to succeed on its merits, although a final ruling will not come until later this year.

As a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, I find it hard to understand why the Obama administration made this decision and why it justified it by relying on a legal opinion that has been criticized by a range of people, including academics and members of Congress. Worse, this decision affects more than the Northern Rockies wolf population. It also sets an alarming precedent for future listing and delisting decisions.

The Bush administration's legal opinion overturned more than 30 years of interpretation of the Endangered Species Act. By this reasoning, protection of species can now be determined by political boundaries and manipulation, not biology. Adjusting populations in this unscientific way -- carving out areas along state lines, as Salazar did in exempting Wyoming from the areas in which wolves were no longer to be considered endangered -- makes the act subject to political manipulation. This legal sleight of hand is in direct contrast to Obama's pledge to restore scientific integrity to decisions about endangered-species conservation.

Salazar should not have allowed the gray wolf to be delisted without first engaging in a clear and transparent public process and without exploring the ramifications of relying on this flawed legal opinion. Defenders of Wildlife reached out several times to work with the Interior Department to craft a plan that would ensure continued wolf recovery while returning management of wolves to state fish and wildlife agencies. Our efforts were ignored.

Because of my intimate involvement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, I was very much looking forward to the day when the wolf population would no longer need federal protections. But wolves and endangered-species conservation now face an uncertain future. If the president's pledge to restore scientific integrity to the Endangered Species Act, and to improve the law, is to be fulfilled, action must be taken immediately. The interior secretary should withdraw the flawed legal opinion on which his delisting relied, restore federal protection to gray wolves in the Northern Rockies and engage all stakeholders in developing a plan to ensure that one of our nation's greatest conservation successes, the restoration of gray wolves to Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies, will not be lost.

The writer is executive vice president for Defenders of Wildlife, which has worked on wolf conservation for more than three decades. She directed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 1997 to 2001.

Getting To Know Endangered Species: Spruce-fir Moss Spider

Did you know that the Spruce-fir moss spider was first identified in 1923? These spiders make there homes in the moss that grow on rocks underneath the forest canopy in the Southern Appalachian Moutains. They are found in high elevated sections of the forest.

They construct tube like webs believed to be housing for prey has never been found in them. They feed on springtails that are abundant in the mossy mats.

The Spruce-fir moss spider were put on the endangered list in 1995 due to the lost of there habitat. There has been a wide spread death of fraser furs cause by the infestation of Balsam woolly adelgid. The death of these trees are causing a drying of the forest ground, drying the moss, from the loss of the forest canopy.