Nathaniel Reed, an environmentalist who worked with Florida Defenders of the Environment with my grandmother, Marjorie Harris Carr, in its founding days, supporting their successful effort to de-authorize the ill-conceived Cross Florida Barge Canal and who helped turn the Endangered Species Act into law while serving as an Assistant Secretary of the Interior died just over a year ago.
The current Secretary of the Interior, David Bernhardt, was a lobbyist for the oil and gas industries, and on August 12, 2019 the Trump administration finalized dramatic rollbacks to the rules that implement the Endangered Species Act. Bernhardt’s new rules for the Endangered Species Act will diminish the issue of climate change in the government’s decisions about protecting wildlife. Meanwhile, 16 year-old climate crisis activist, Greta Thunberg, is sailing across the Atlantic ocean in a zero-emissions racing yacht from England to New York to speak at the UN Climate Summit. Read Carl Hiaasen’s, recipient of the Marjorie Harris Carr Award for Environmental Advocacy, opinion piece about the Trump administration’s endangered-species policy here.
The Secretary of the Interior in 2016, Sally Jewel, once said, “Dam removal can rewrite a painful chapter in our history, and it can be done in a manner that protects the many interests in the Basin.”
If they aren’t going to let the river flow then we are going to let the puke flow.
When a manatee comes up for air and gets a boat propeller to the face, that iconic chubby grey nose and mouth gets lopped off leaving a manatee with a face resembling Red Skull. At that point, what can a manatee do but float around trying to breathe through the remains of two bloody nasal passages that it can no longer close while the rest of its severed prehensile snout is hanging on by a flap of skin on its chinny chin chin.
A manatee that was struck by a boat a couple of weeks ago at GUESS WHICH CANAL had to be EUTHANIZED! There are videos on facebook of boats speeding through the same canal. There was no press allowed but I was reminded by Elizabeth Neville, of Defenders of Wildlife, that manatee deaths are public knowledge. Read her latest blog about her visit to the Ocklawaha River that I accompanied her on here: Buried Treasure.
Maybe the only manatee injury photos the public sees are of manatees swimming around with tiger-stripe propeller scars on their backs. But what is actually happening is; spinal cord damage, paralyzation, brain damage. Have you ever seen a manatee skeleton like the one on display at the Florida Springs Institute? A manatees’ ribs are wide on its back so we’re talking broken ribs when a manatee is run over by a boat. Fun fact: manatees use their rib cage muscles to compress their lung volume which make their bodies more dense so they can sink underwater without having to actively swim.
Manatee deaths by boat strikes hit a new record in Florida in the first half of 2019.
And 2018 was also a record breaking year for manatee deaths by boat strikes...
So come on down to Florida for some filet-O-manatee. While supplies last. OR sign this petition to free the Ocklawaha River and restore its manatee thermal refuge sites.