Environmental groups want state to change species list

When it comes to endangered species, everything’s in a name.

Environmentalists plan to go head to head with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission at the agency’s June 7 meeting, before commissioners vote on whether to take the bald eagle off the state imperiled species list and reclassify the manatee and gopher tortoise as threatened.

The state uses World Conservation Union guidelines to rank endangered and threatened species, but an issue of semantics has environmental groups such as Defenders of Wildlife, Save the Manatee Club and the Humane Society of the United States up in arms.

Animals identified as “endangered” by the union are called “threatened” by the state commission.

“People say what’s in a name? We believe the name really has consequences in Florida laws and rules,” said Laurie Macdonald, Florida director of Defenders of Wildlife. “We are worried it will mislead the public into thinking the species are doing far better than they are, and that in turn could lead to a lack of support that is needed for conservation of the species.”

Defenders of Wildlife and 17 other environmental groups joined together Tuesday in signing a petition asking the FWC to revisit the way it lists imperiled species.

“At this stage the commission has 30 days to respond to our petition,” said Martha Collins, attorney representing the environmental groups. If the commission rejects the petition, environmental groups might file suit, she said.

Dan Sullivan, endangered species coordinator with the FWC, said the environmental groups are getting hung up on the names.

He said the union uses several categories to rank species, but only three require objective population and habitat calculations — critically endangered, endangered and threatened. A fourth category, vulnerable, is subjective.

Instead of the union’s language, the state uses endangered, threatened and species of special concern.

Environmentalists say the union’s “vulnerable” is akin to the state’s “species of special concern” and “critically endangered” is a sub-category of “endangered.”

Patrick Rose, director of government relations for Save the Manatee Club, said the “critically endangered” category is meant to draw stronger attention to species that need immediate conservation measures to keep them from imminent extinction.

He pointed to a letter written by Russell Lande, a biology professor at the University of California in San Diego who helped form the World Conservation Union’s ranking criteria.

Lande wrote to the FWC last year and said the state’s classification language “seriously violates the original intent” of the union’s ranking criteria.

He said the linguistic mismatch would accelerate the loss of the biological diversity statewide.

Rose and other environmentalists said classifying only animals on the cusp of extinction as endangered sets the bar too high.

“The (Florida) panther and the right whale barely make critically endangered,” Rose said. With populations of about 80 and 300 respectively, the Florida panther and the right whale are considered two of the most endangered animals in the world.

Gopher tortoises

Despite her criticism of the state’s ranking criteria, Macdonald said she will encourage commissioners to classify the gopher tortoise as threatened, which could bring more protection for the hard-shelled reptile.

The animal is now considered a species of special concern, which would earn the title of threatened in international lingo. State biologists recommend uplisting it to threatened.

“If it can meet this very high bar,” Macdonald said, “It means it truly is in trouble.”

Kevin Enge, herp coordinator for the FWC, said there are hundreds of thousands of gopher tortoises crawling around in Florida, but he said the population of the animal has plummeted by half over the last 50 years.

Enge chaired the study that recommends uplisting gopher tortoises to threatened status.

Because gopher tortoises are long-lived and slow to reproduce it takes a while for the species to recover from a significant population decline, Enge said.

“The average female gopher tortoise, even if she lives to 50 years old, is only going to have three or four babies that are going to live to adulthood.”

He said the tortoises which people see in their yards are usually not a part of a breeding population.

Habitat loss from construction and mining, habitat degradation from fire suppression, and habitat fragmentation from roads all are leading to the decline of the gopher tortoise.

After the commission agrees to bump the tortoise from species of special concern to threatened, the FWC will be instructed to form a management plan to make sure the animal will have a better shot at long-term survival.

The management plan might also address the controversial issue of entombment, Enge said. In some counties, developers can receive permits to bury tortoises alive in their burrows if the creatures can’t be relocated on the property or nearby.

“Hopefully, there will be a lot less of that going on because there will be a lot more options of what to do with those tortoises,” Enge said.

Manatees

An estimated 2,310 manatees are floating around Florida waterways today, but state scientists predict the marine mammal’s population has a 50/50 chance of dropping by 30 percent within three generations.

Still, there are too many manatees around for them to remain classified as endangered under the state criteria. To Elsa Haubold, section leader for FWC’s species conservation planning, that’s cause for celebrating.

“They are on the road to recovery,” Haubold said. “The whole goal of putting an animal on the list, that’s a bad thing, our goal is to get it off the list.”

Haubold, who chaired the study that recommends downlisting the manatee, said threats to the creature, such as boat collisions, red tide and cold weather still exist. That’s why she and other scientists recommend that the animal remain on the imperiled list.

Implementing boat speed zones in the 1970s and a putting a ban on manatee hunting in 1893 helped the population increase.

But while the mammals may be faring better statewide, the second largest of four populations of manatees in Florida is still considered endangered under the state criteria.

The southwest Florida manatee population of about 1,364 is expected to decline by 80 percent within in the next three generations, according to the downlisting study.

Once commissioners vote to reclassify the animal, scientists will create a management plan in hopes of keeping the species from declining further, Haubold said.

Rose said the FWC’s assurance that a management plan will keep manatees from reaching the brink of extinction isn’t enough, because the state Legislature sets regulations that pertain to endangered and threatened species.

“If the commission does downlist manatees, even though the management plan says they are not going to roll back protection, we think the developers will lobby legislators to roll back protection under the manatee sanctuary act,” Rose said.

Most of the boat speed zones in the state were adopted under that state act.

Bald eagles

Since the 1972 ban on DDT and other toxic pesticides that weakened the shells of birds, bald eagles have made an excellent comeback.

“The eagle has shown to be a very adaptable animal, more adaptable that we initially gave it credit for,” Sullivan said. “As they have recovered they have intermingled with humans and have been more adaptable than people thought they might be.”

Sullivan chaired the study that recommended removing bald eagles from the state’s imperiled species list. The report stated bald eagles have not met the criteria for being on the list for at least five years. Scientists estimate that 1,133 nesting pairs of bald eagles live in Florida.

Before the bird can be removed from the list, state scientists will create a management plan to ensure that it does not make it back on the list.

Sullivan said it’s hard to say whether current management regulations helped the eagle recover and he said he’s not sure what the management plan will recommend.

“Just because the classification of the animal might change does not necessarily mean that some of those protections will change,” Sullivan said.