Chubby Florida manatees are adorable
Lumbering in the cosy waters of their habitat, they look like big soft squishy grey pillows. Anyone who wants to jump in and give them a big squeeze is in luck at the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge on the central gulf coast of Florida.
US Fish and Wildlife Service officials who manage the refuge say go ahead, they don’t bite.
But whether that’s good for the beloved “sea cow” is a question that could one day be resolved by a threatened lawsuit. A group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility is deeply upset that the refuge allows swimming with an endangered marine mammal in the warm springs that serve as their winter sanctuary.
People are loving the manatees to death, the group says, and Fish and Wildlife has let the smothering affection develop into a lucrative tourism industry at Three Sisters Springs in Citrus County.
PEER filed a notice of intent to sue Fish and Wildlife if they don’t tell tourists to back off. Fish and Wildlife has until May to respond.
“Swim with programmes significantly impair these endangered animals’ essential behavioural patterns, including breeding, feeding and sheltering,” said the group’s counsel, Laura Dumais. “Some people have a hard time understanding this connection, because they don’t see manatees keeling over before their eyes; they might think that the manatees don’t seem to mind.”
The manatees certainly don’t seem to mind, the refuge’s manager said.
Florida’s manatee population topped a record 6,000 this week in the state’s latest survey, nearly 1,000 more than the previous high. The numbers are so high that some are calling on the service to remove the manatee’s protection under the Endangered Species Act, where they’ve been listed since it began in 1973. A review that might downgrade them from endangered to threatened is in the draft stage.
“The manatee is actually a success story. Their numbers are going up, the population is going up,” said Andrew Gude, manager of the refuge. “Tourism has also gone through the roof. You can rent a car and for US$40 (RM148) you can swim with a mammal that will never rip you apart.
The reason the service has been so supportive is that when people see the manatees and get in the water with them, in a lot of ways it changes their lives and they’re a lot more conservationminded.”
With 327,000 visitors last year, the Crystal River refuge was the fifth most visited in the country, with sweet, lovable manatees as the main attraction. — WPBloomberg