The Florida Manatee
Photo credit: USGS
The Endangered Mammals of
Florida
The Florida Manatee
Trichechus manatus
latirostris
|
A Manatee Alert!
If you are about to
choose a new License
plate for your Florida vehicle, please
consider choosing the Manatee plate.
They are being chosen less and less and
are in serious danger of being removed
from the list of our Florida plates.
This will in turn mean that a great deal
of the money that has been coming in for
Manatee protection, will cease to exist.
This is not a good thing.
Please think about these very Endangered
animals and what our world would be like,
if they were no longer in it.
Please choose a Manatee License Plate
and then tell a friend.~ |
Florida Manatees,
which are shaped somewhat like a seal,
have two flipper
arms, thick greyish skin
and whiskers on their
upper lip.
Their length is about 10
feet and they weigh nearly 1,000 pounds.
The Manatees closest
ancestor is the elephant and their habitats
are slow moving
shallow waters, like the St. John's River and canals,
salt water bays,
estuaries and coastal areas abundant with seagrass.
Manatees eat aquatic
plants and can consume
as much as 10-15 % of their
body weight daily.
In the summer, the
Manatees will travel as far
north as
Virginia and as far west as Alabama.
They
remain in Florida
in the winter because of the many warm
spring fed waters found
there that they need to survive.
The warm water around
Nuclear power plants has attracted them,
the possible negative
affect of this on them remains to be seen.
The Manatee are
completely defenseless, shy, reclusive and harmless.
Manatees headed for a disaster
Photo credit: USGS
This gentle giant has
been at the center of controversy for many years
but, unless a
great deal
more is done to preserve them,
the Manatee will soon go
the way of the Dodo bird.
Each year many of them
are killed or maimed by
recreational boaters who race through
Florida Waterways,
ignoring warning signs
in the areas
where the Manatee live.
Much has been done
in the past to attempt to protect them,
but the purse
strings of the boating community are very deep
and they are not pleased
with the Manatee zone speed signs
that have been put in
many of Florida's waterways.
One of my fondest
memories is of a day that my
children and I spent in the water
with them at
Blue Springs State Park many,
many years ago.
The Manatees seemed as
curious about us as we were
of them, gently touching and
nudging us in the water.
This human contact has since
been discontinued
to protect the health of the
Manatee.
A Manatee Mother and Calf
Photo credit: USGS
These sweet, curious
creatures whose only enemy is man,
have been, like so many
others animals,
crowded out of their
natural habitats.
Now the Manatee are
dependent upon us for their well being,
and we must be their
guardians, because
we have left them
with little other choice.
