A Pet's View / March 2007
Living Large, Giving Big
 © Patrick M. Rose, Save the Manatee Club
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Last year was the worst on record for manatees, with 416 reported manatee deaths. At least 86 of these gentle, slow moving mammals were killed by boat strikes, making it the second highest mortality from watercraft collisions ever recorded.
Like their close relatives elephants, Manatees are completely herbivorous. They eat aquatic plants, grazing for food along water bottoms and on the surface, powered by a flat, paddle shaped tail. Their faces are wrinkled, with whiskers on the snout. Most of their time is spent eating, resting, and traveling through shallow, slow-moving rivers, estuaries, saltwater bays, canals and coastal areas.
Big, if not, to most eyes, beautiful, the average adult manatee is over nine feet long, and weighs 800-1,200 pounds. A migratory species, manatees are concentrated in Florida during winter, but during summer months they can be found as far west as Texas and as far north as Virginia. Summer sightings in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina are common.
The gentle giants have no natural enemies, and if they could only get away from people, it is believed they can live 60 years or more. Manatee mortalities tend to be human-related, especially from collisions with watercraft. Manatees also die from ingesting fish hooks, litter and monofilament line and from entanglement in crab trap lines. Some have been killed as a result of crushing or drowning in canal locks and flood control structures. Ultimately, loss of habitat is the most serious threat facing the West Indian manatees in the US. Listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, there are only about 3,000 of them left.
In 1981, Jimmy Buffet and a former Florida governor founded the Save the Manatee Club, a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting endangered manatees and their habitat. Funds from the Club’s adoption programs go toward numerous education and conservation efforts.
One of the clubs happiest programs is the manatee adoption program.
For $25 dollars, gift givers can adopt a really big Easter Buddy for someone special. For Mother’s Day (or mothers who keep asking when they’re going to get grandchildren) Manatee mommas and their babies are available for adoption. Even friends who ‘have everything’ probably don’t have a manatee.
A manatee adoption is a great gift. Adopted manatees take up no room in the house. They don’t need to be taken for walks, or to the groomer. They don’t bark or chew up shoes. They don’t claw furniture, sniff inappropriately or scatter toys around the house. They don’t use a car, a cell phone or a credit card.
They never stay out late. Excellent parents themselves, manatees are great role models who never overstay their welcome. And, there is something so sweet about the docile creatures with their wrinkled, whiskered faces, they can’t help but bring a smile.
Adoptive ‘parents’ receive an adoption certificate along with their manatee’s photo and biography. The $25 goes toward protecting enough habitat to support a viable manatee population.
Florida has over 8,400 miles of tidal waters, 11,000 miles of rivers and streams, and 10,000 miles of canals, many of these used by manatees. However, much of prime manatee habitat has been destroyed or is being degraded by the fast pace of development. Contributing to the manatees adoption program supports efforts to adopt additional sanctuaries and refuges that either limit or prohibit human activities in essential manatee habitat areas. It also supports establishing coastal development guidelines or plans that direct development away from ecologically sensitive areas and habitat areas that provide for the manatees’ biological needs.
Adopting a manatee is one way to think big, live large and give a great gift-and help save a world for them.
For more information, visit www.savethemanatee.org or call 1-800-432-JOIN (5646).
Copyright © 2007 A Woman's View. All rights reserved.
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