Florida's manatees are currently dying of starvation in record numbers. They no longer have access to the supply of seagrasses they need to survive due to the effects of nutrient pollution, point source pollution, and the chemical management being employed to reduce the number of natural filter plants in our waterways.

There is a mutually beneficial and cost-effective solution being widely recommended and backed by scientists and activists across the state but FWC is refusing to implement it and has instead approved a very limited and fairly ineffective lettuce feeding program. Several experts have already advised FWC that manatees do not naturally take to eating lettuce when it is introduced to wild manatee populations that have never encountered it before (as they do not recognize it as a natural part of their environment), they have also advised that water hyacinths provide a more species-appropriate diet to meet the nutritional needs of the manatees being fed. 

Water hyacinths are considered a problematic invasive freshwater plant and can be found in many bodies of fresh water in Florida. FWC has the authority to create and fund a sustainable feeding program for the manatees by harvesting the free and abundant resource of water hyacinths from bodies of fresh water and feeding them to manatees that gather in brackish water where the water hyacinth will not spread or pose a threat within the ecosystem (subsequently eliminating the need to spray them with chemicals to manage them). Please sign to tell FWC to take immediate action on this issue to prevent more manatee deaths today and #stopthestarve

The manatees need additional feeding sites established and they need species-appropriate food they recognize as a food source for the feeding program to effectively stop them from starving to death.

Contact the FWC Commissioners at the link below and ask them to approve more feeding sites and to feed the starving manatees harvested water hyacinth-https://myfwc.com/contact/fwc-office/senior-staff/commissioners/