John — One of the Trump Administration’s first acts was to demote the manatee from “endangered” to “threatened”. The federal government said that nobody would even notice this change. We've noticed.
John — One of the Trump Administration’s first acts was to demote the manatee from “endangered” to “threatened”. The federal government said that nobody would even notice this change.
Heartbreakingly, we’ve noticed.
This decision stripped away important protections from the “sea cow” and now over 400 manatees have died in the first two months of 2021. If this pace continues, over 1/3rd of the total manatee population could die before the end of the year.
Ordinarily, animals are only removed from the endangered species list if the circumstances that landed them there are resolved.
But in this case, the manatees are facing as much danger from speeding boats and food scarcity as ever. In fact, the year before manatees were declassified as “endangered” they faced a record number of boat deaths.
So, the consensus view of scientists and the general public opposed the move (during the public comment period only 72 people supported removing the manatees from the endangered species list, while nearly 87,000 comments opposed it), but the Trump U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service went ahead and delisted the manatees anyways. In doing so, they relied on an obscure formula that claimed the manatees were about to experience a sudden miraculous recovery.
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