Save Florida’s iconic bird — the flamingo

In lawns across America, plastic pink flamingos have not just survived, but thrived. What a shame the same can’t be said for Florida’s real flamingos, those rare elegant leggy, long-necked lovelies that only recently won official blessing as a native species.

It’s almost impossible to fathom that the iconic bird mostlinked to the Sunshine State actually lived much of the last century bearing the label of a “non-native.” That error was finally rectified this spring when scientists published a paper agreeing the pink showstopper was native, just hard to spot after 1900. Their work, published in the American Ornithological Society’s journal The Condor, finally provided an answer that led the Florida Fish and Wildlife Florida’s flamingo has Commission to erase the finally been recognized non-native label on its website as a native bird, but this spring. protection could be

Now it’s time for Florida and compromised. federal officials to band together to protect, manage and President Trump plans promote our favorite bird’s to roll back key fortunes. A federal or state provisions in the listing as a threatened or endangered Endangered Species Act. native species is the first needed step to help their numbers expand beyond zoos, parks and postcards.

The odds are not good, though, given Thursday’s announcement that the Trump administration plans to roll back key provisions of the Endangered Species Act, the landmark 1973 law designed to prevent the extinction of declining species.

The rollback is part of the president’s promise to reduce government regulations on businesses and landowners. It would end the practice of giving threatened species the same protections as endangered species. It would end the requirement that endangered species be protected no matter the costs. And it would weaken the penalties for wantonly killing migratory birds.

Interior Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt promises endangered animals and plants would still be protected, but the changes would simplify how the law is used. “Some of our regulations were promulgated back in 1986, and frankly a great deal has been learned.”

Environmentalists see it differently. “If these regulations had been in place in the 1970s, the bald eagle and the gray whale would be extinct today,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Washington Post.

Right now, flamingos are not considered to be endangered. To even be protected, Florida first had to consider the bird native. And until this year, the state’s official position was that if spotted, flamingos must have escaped from some domestic flocks or wandered in from Mexico, Cuba or the Bahamas.

But the banding of a single flamingo in Florida Bay changed all that. It relayed information about the bird’s non-traveling habits. And it helped convince scientists that Florida is, indeed, a native home to flamingos, just not a friendly one . ...

Florida has plenty of reasons to promote its newfound native bird. The tourist industry needs all the help it can get to attract travelers in search of what many think populates the entire state. Standing tall on its lithe legs, the feathered beauty is a perfect foil for the greenish toxic runoff dirtying beaches on both sides of the state from Lake Okeechobee releases. Protecting the flamingo can help the state redeem its reputation, at least a bit.

The birds, after all, have attracted tourists for years. Even the nation’s most famous ornithologist, John James Audubon, saw flamingos in 1832 near Indian Key, an island off Islamorada, in the Upper Keys . ...

Let’s hope the flamingo’s newfound documentation leads to improved protections and lots more sightings.

The plastic flamingos are funny. The real ones are treasures.