Dec 5, 2007 10:36 am US/Eastern
State May Remove Manatee From Endangered List
KEY LARGO (CBS4) ―
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission are meeting in the Keys Wednesday to consider moving the manatee off the state's list of endangered species.
Its removal from the endangered list has animal advocates concerned. The say changing the manatee's status to the lower category of endangered could mislead the public into believing they don't need to be careful around the animals.
Manatees have been on the state endangered list since 1979, but now state experts say the manatee is no longer at imminent risk of extinction which is one of the requirements to be on the endangered species list. They say classifying them as threatened and facing a high risk of extinction is more appropriate.
That reclassification does not mean a change in protections enjoyed by the species which will continue to have federal endangered status.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commissioners had been set to vote on the reclassification last September, but that vote was postponed
after Governor Charlie Crist asked for a delay so that the three recently appointed commissioners had time to study the issue. He also said a better way to count the animals needed to be found before a downgrade could be considered.
The method for counting the mammals has always been disputed, and its results questioned. This year, the annual census recorded
about 28-hundred manatees in Florida's waters; that's up from around 13-hundred counted during the first survey in 1991.
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