Protecting manatees hits close to home for many in South Florida, and the efforts have been an ongoing legal battle between wildlife advocates and the state of Florida.
Katrina Shadix and the wildlife protection group Bear Warriors United are once again battling the state of Florida over protecting manatees.
“I think it’s very disheartening,” she said. “We shouldn’t have the government fighting us on cleaning up the environment and saving wildlife.”
We recently saw firsthand where the manatees are starving to death in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon, which stretches from Palm Beach County to Daytona Beach.
The lagoon is where manatees come for the warm water, but in recent years, the northern end of the lagoon has been a death trap for them.
Marine biologist Peter Barile says pollutants are being released by septic tanks and water treatment facilities along the lagoon, and are fueling algae growth in the water, which is causing the manatees’ main food source, sea grass, to die.
“All of these homes along the lagoon that are septic tanks are slowly leaking literally tons of nitrogen and phosphorous into the system,” he said. “So this algae is reducing light down to the seagrasses, essentially smothering them and killing them.”
Between December 2020 and April 2022, more than 1,200 manatees died of starvation in the area.
Now, Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection is appealing a ruling a federal judge issued in the spring that the department violated the Federal Endangered Species Act.
As a result, the judge temporarily halted the approval of any new septic tank permits along the lagoon.
That ruling followed a 2022 lawsuit in which Bear Warriors United sued Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection to help protect the manatees.
“They suffered immensely and for a very long time,” said Shadix.
Added Barile: “There was lax leadership from the state of Florida over decades that allowed this problem to get worse and worse.”
The judge found “a definitive causal link” between Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection wastewater regulations and the ongoing risk to manatees.
Then in May, he agreed to what was essentially a wish list from Bear Warriors United, things they wanted the state to fix on behalf of the manatees.
In addition to halting septic tank permits, Florida was required to submit a plan to monitor manatees’ health, and set up a supplemental feeding program for manatees in the lagoon.
In its latest court filing, Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection says it’s not them, but Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission that is responsible for wildlife issues, arguing the judge is insisting the wrong agency make the required changes.
“The FDEP is beating a dead horse. It’s already been decided by a judge, a federal court judge,” said Shadix.
Local 10 reached out to both the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office, but neither provided a response to our questions.
“We’re not going to stop until we convince the government to save the manatees from extinction,” said Shadix. “Now that we have won this lawsuit, we think we have a really good chance of working with the state to make sure the manatees don’t go extinct on our watch.”
Wildlife experts say they’re hopeful the manatee population will return to what it once was, especially now that this lawsuit has been won and allows experts to work with the state to prevent extinction.
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