Manatees are starving to death. Now environmental groups are suing over it
More than a thousand manatees have starved to death in Florida this year, and environmental groups are now formally pointing the finger at the Environmental Protection Agency as a culprit.
Earthjustice, Save the Manatee Club and several other groups announced their intent to sue the federal agency for failing to protect the threatened species, specifically by setting water quality standards low enough to allow pollution-fueled algae blooms to kill off the seagrass the manatees rely on for survival.
The suit aims to force the EPA to reassess the amount of pollution it allows in the Indian River Lagoon. The state set limits on phosphorus and nitrogen, nutrients from wastewater and fertilizer that cause algae blooms, in 2013 and the EPA approved them.
“Almost a decade later we’re in total ecologic collapse of the Indian River Lagoon.” said Elizabeth Forsyth, an attorney for Earthjustice. “It’s time for EPA to step back in and re-evaluate those standards.”
This month, the situation grew so dire that Florida took an unprecedented step: breaking its own laws and feeding romaine lettuce to the starving sea cows to help them survive the winter.
Patrick Rose, executive director of Save the Manatee Club, said manatees have resorted to eating non-nutritious clumps of algae, the lower limbs of mangroves and the grass from waterfront lawns for survival. They’ve even been spotted nosing through sand and muck to scrounge for anything with calories.
In the Indian River Lagoon, a manatee hot spot for the east coast, there used to be 77,000 acres of seagrass in 2011.
“We’ve lost about 95% of sea grass biomass since then,” Rose said.
Rose, who’s worked for 45 years to protect the species, said he counts this as among the worst moments for manatees in his career. From December of 2020 to this year, he said about 19% of the east coast population of manatees has perished. Regrowing the population will be slow work.
“If you could flip a switch and there’s plenty of food for every manatee overnight, it would still take several years to return to that population. Under the current scenario, it’s looking like a decade,” he said.
Manatees were downlisted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from endangered to threatened in 2017, a controversial move that some saw as a victory and sign of recovery for manatees and others saw as a premature removal of protections for the vulnerable creatures.
Rose said he believes that relisting affected how much the agencies listened to environmental groups’ warnings about the growing threat.
“It’s beyond belief that they were willing to ignore the seriousness of this issue until it had to lead to this kind of catastrophe,” he said. “This kind of critical need has come about from things that were, frankly, preventable. This situation should never have happened.”
EPA Spokesperson Allison Wise said that the agency is reviewing the notice of intent to sue.
“EPA is concerned about the manatee deaths and is committed to working with Florida and other partners to implement nutrient reduction strategies,” she said in an email.
If you spot a starving or injured manatee you can report it to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) by calling 1-888-404-FWCC (3922).
