I’ve written to most of the political parties, and obviously none of them will take me very seriously, so now I’m trying as many loony party candidates who have published e-mails.
Please take a few moments to read this information from the save the manatee club.
In 2001, the Coastal Conservation Association of Florida (CCA), a Florida fishing group, petitioned the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWCC) to re-evaluate the endangered status of the manatee under the Florida Endangered Species Act. (It is important to remember that this is not the same as the federal Endangered Species Act, which also lists manatees as an endangered species.) The FWCC has allowed the petition to go forward, even though there is no evidence whatsoever that this action is warranted at this time.
What is most frustrating is that manatees are stuck with the FWCC’s extremely stringent, “one-size-fits-all-species” listing/delisting criteria - criteria that do not consider individual species’ life histories and are not suitable for long-lived, slow-reproducing animals such as marine mammals. For example, even the critically endangered northern right whale, whose population numbers about 300 animals, would not qualify as either endangered or threatened under the FWCC current definitions!
Although the FWCC did finally agree to hold off on the manatee reclassification until they could revisit their listing criteria for all species, we need to urge them to involve qualified scientists to help assign the appropriate scientific criteria needed to determine whether a species qualifies as endangered or threatened.
Listing or delisting a species should not be a popularity contest! Any assessment of the biological status of any species should be based on benchmarks similar to those supported by population experts at the Manatee Population and Ecology Workshop held in April 2002, including:
-Stable or increasing survival rates of all age classes
-Stable or increasing reproductive rates
-Comprehensive habitat protection
-Significant reduction of human-related mortality
This is a cause very close to my heart as a member of the save the manatee club, and I believe that this should be an issue that we should be interested in this as a country. The policy makers surrounding this issue are governor Bush of Florida, and his brother the president of the United States, I believe that if we see ourselves as special friends of the Americans then we shouldn’t be afraid of telling them when they are wrong.
I realise that this issue is not your responsibility, but I also believe that if more MPs and political leaders were aware of this issue, then we could do something about it.
Sorry about the standard letter, but it explains what I’m trying to do. If I can get manatee issues into the public domain, then hopefully something could be done. This is not a case of a less economically developed country, killing an animal for meat, but a supposedly educated western country being bloody minded.
As (hopefully) there is an election coming up, your parties profile will be increased, I would be very grateful if you could to raise manatee profiles at the same time.
web-surfers wanted to know about marine proboscideans.