Unchecked water pollution is driving a starvation crisis for manatees. More than half of their deaths have occurred in the Indian River Lagoon, where pollution has been destroying the seagrass that serves as their primary food source. Manatees are also seriously threatened by collisions with boats, which can injure and kill them. These collisions are so common, sadly, that almost all adult Florida manatees bear boat-propeller scars, which biologists now use to tell them apart from each other.
Last November the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to again grant maximum protection to manatees — reclassifying them from threatened to endangered under the Endangered Species Act — so they can get the help they desperately need. This month is the agency’s deadline to respond.
