Feds delay protection for endangered Manatees:

[amborin]

FLORIDA - January 12 - 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, comes 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."

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/01/12-7

[BrklynLiberal]

1. The EPA should step in and overrule..since they are part of our environment

[malakai2]

3. Overrule what?

EPA doesn't administer the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service do. As a matter of fact, whenever EPA (or any federal agency for that matter) decides to do something, they need to run the plans by FWS and/or NMFS to make sure the action complies with ESA.

Conservation groups should be using situations like this to highlight:

1.) the many different directions in which the wildlife agencies are being pulled, which forces them to prioritize at the expense of species and habitats, and

2.) that perhaps given the game of catchup the wildlife agencies are playing after being defunded during the Bush administration, and subsequently the massive listing petitions and FOIA requests they've received from conservation organizations, maybe the wildlife agencies need a little (or a whole lot) more funding to meet their mandates.

Some of the FWS offices in larger states are indeed fairly large, for example, some of the California offices. However, consider all the projects permitted, funded, or carried out by federal agencies in that state. Every one of those projects crosses a FWS or NMFS biologist's desk, and individual projects can require weeks of effort to revise before they meet the requirements of ESA. Then there are the listing petitions, which for each species requires an initial 90 day review, and if that's positive (meaning listing may be required), then a 12 month review. Responses to listing petitions, both 90 day and 12 month findings, are published in the Federal Register, which in itself is very expensive. All this is just one branch of FWS and NMFS...FWS also has branches dedicated to managing refuges, acquiring refuges and easements, law enforcement, legal interpretation and defense (they spend a lot defending themselves from conservation groups that don't think listing decisions are fast enough, or correct), another concerned with resource damage assessment and remediation (think oil spills, landscape-scale pesticide or mine tailings contamination), fisheries, migratory birds, and so on.

Oh, and as I mentioned, some of the offices, such as the California offices, are fairly large. They struggle to keep up with the workload. The field offices in the Dakotas (one in each state) dedicated to project reviews, listing petitions, reintroductions, and contaminant assessments are staffed by five biologists apiece. I know at least one of them was staffed a few administrations ago by twenty or so biologists. Field offices in other states are similarly understaffed relative to workload because they are funded at levels well below those necessary to meet the mandates. Being reminded of that obvious fact on a regular basis by conservation groups is probably not helping matters.

[amborin]

4. do

you work for FWS?

[malakai2]

5. Yes

I should add that critical habitat designations were frowned upon by several administrations and so were not done for most species. This has been due in part to perceived economic loss from effectively declaring specific areas off limits to federally authorized or funded projects (not private projects, however), and in part to the cost of making a designation. If you're interested in understanding how critical habitat designation works, and the potentially immense resource commitments (time, personnel, money, legal fees) involved, seek out the bull trout critical habitat saga and the Canada lynx critical habitat saga on google.

You won't find some of the more interesting information about those two designations online...during the comment period for one of them, the biologist responsible for overseeing the designation at the field office was targeted by a group that encouraged members to submit form letters via fax, which could be accomplished by clicking a link online. That biologist's office had a small tabletop fax machine, because it's a FWS office after all, not the IRS or DOD. They started receiving faxes, and several days of manually feeding the fax machine later, they finally ran out of paper. The result of receiving 40,000 copies of the same form letter? It counted as effectively one comment, because the information presented was identical in all 40,000 copies of the letter. That biologist and staff still had to read through all those letters, however, so that they didn't miss anything that might have varied from letter to letter. Talk about a big waste of time, paper, and money.

Then consider that with the manatee, they'd be dealing with a species that uses rivers, estuaries, and coastal waters in a large part of Florida, a species that moves a lot depending on weather conditions, and for which recovery is far off in the future if it's possible at all. Also remember that FWS is required to consider economic impacts when making critical habitat decisions, and that there are many vested economic interests in and along the waterways in the state of Florida. Oh, and figure that no matter what the outcome, if they started today the designation would not be complete for at least a year or two and that the agency would be sued no matter what the final designation is...if they lose (not rare in critical habitat cases) the designation would go back to the agency on remand and they'd have to work on it some more before arriving at a new decision. If someone isn't happy with the new decision, there can be another lawsuit. Rinse and repeat.

[amborin]

6. that's all fascinating, thanks for posting!

I'll read the material you suggested. It seems that the sad fact is that economic issue trump environmental concerns, and some extremely devious tactics are used to promote them. It's all very ominous for the species concerned.

[Mojorabbit]

8. Even though the office

received a boatload of identical letters, there was a person behind each signature who took the time to press send of each one. That is a good thing to remember, I think.
There are a lot of things that could be done right now to help the manatees such as enforcing the slow speed no wake in the inter-coastal. It drives my husband crazy to go so slow but we both love watching the manatees.
A lot of regulatory agencies have had their funding cut. We do lakewatch and take specimens to monitor our lake. They have had to go to every other month now as they do not have funding to test the specimens monthly. It is a sad thing.

[malakai2]

9. It's good and bad

Good that people are interested enough to take the time to try to be involved, bad that the public comment system is not very intuitive or effortless. This is one place where conservation groups would do very well to tell people to attend the meetings, write letters in their own words, and point out scientific or economic factors that aren't being considered in the analysis. It doesn't work like an election. I've explained that to representatives of conservation groups, and they still insist on sending form letters. I really don't get it.

Here's an example...the state in which I work held a public pesticide user forum. At the forum were the agriculture commissioner, a delegation from the governor's office, a few of the state representatives, a few local representatives from federal agencies, a few dozen industry representatives, and three farmers. Among the public, that's a few dozen plus three pesticide use proponents versus zero responsible use proponents and zero pesticide use opponents. Guess what the message to the state representatives and governor's office was? Guess what their next message to the congressional delegation in D.C. was? Sure would have been nice to have had at least a little balance.

[amborin]

10. good ideas!

given the way the regulatory agencies are burdened and under-funded, it's going to be up to individuals to press for changes, such as the "slow speed no wake" rule you suggested!

[katandmoon]

2. Pssst, manatees -- change your name to Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan, Chase, etc., etc.!

[Vinnie From Indy]

7. lol!