aw, fuck

Pretty soon only Snooty will be left:

[T]he Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) at its regular quarterly meeting in West Palm Beach, Florida, ignored public outcry and voted to downlist manatees from “Endangered” status to “Threatened” over the objections of numerous scientists and manatee advocates.

In 2005, Florida's manatees suffered their second-worst mortality year on record, with 396 sea cows dying from red tide (giant blooms of toxic algae fed by agricultural runoff), propeller injuries and other causes. There were estimated to be only 2,560 manatees left in Florida's waters as of the 2004 aerial census, so the die-off is a catastrophic 15% of the population.

The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission is stacked with developers, all appointed by Jeb Bush. By downlisting manatees, state funding will be cut, boating will become even more hazardous to manatees, and manatees will receive far less protection when waterfront development projects are under consideration. A state downlisting could also pave the way for manatees to be downlisted at the federal level.

Scientists estimate that at the current mortality rate, without significant changes in development and boating regulations, the manatee population will be cut in half within fifty years. After that, it's just a matter of time until the breeding population is genetically unsustainable.

I grew up in Manatee County, Florida, lived on the Manatee River and went to Manatee High School. While there are many things about Florida and the South that made me choose to live elsewhere as an adult, we bring our son back every year for the water and the wildlife.

What Bush and his cronies don't seem to understand is that a Florida developed without regard to the environment, including the manatees, is a Florida that will soon become Coney Island or Atlantic City: a carnie-filled heatsink with bright lights, loud noise and a few rides, good for a weekend, maybe, but not somewhere you want to live or vacation.

Contact Jeb Bush and tell him to stop being the developers' #1 nutsucker here. (You should probably also ask him to reconsider the delisting.)

You can send an online letter protesting the reclassification here. Florida lives and dies by tourism, so out-of-state petitions are worth just as much as in-state.

Send a letter to the editor to one of Florida's major newspapers here.

The US Fish & Wildlife Service is also going to look into the manatee's federal status. Tell them to keep their mitts off manatee protection here.