Playfully dancing through the waters, bashfully approaching swimmers, clumsily squashing into the glass when taken from their oceanic homes, one can 't help being captivated by the social and charismatic West Indian Manatee. My own fascination with the trichechus manatus, or sea cow, as I like to call it, began in the second grade. It 's difficult to pinpoint the exact moment and cause for this obsession, though something tells me it had a great deal to do with the manatee-shaped mailbox I passed daily on my walk to school, and even more to do with the manatee 's wise eyes, paddle-like flippers and rotund bodies. Could anyone help loving such a gentle beast? I certainly couldn 't! And their cuteness is surely a survival technique, especially …show more content…
Considering the battle for this demotion started 10+ years ago, when the USFWS was court-ordered to execute the review in the 2005 lawsuit against them by the Florida Home Builder 's association, it could be reasonably concluded that this decision is for the best (Grinberg and Couwels). If we assume that this decision is for the best, which "best" are we referring to? I 'd argue that this will be best for humans, but could, and likely will, put the Florida manatees in great detriment. Many may think the downgrade is primarily symbolic of the manatee 's recent success as a species, considering they would still be protected by the endangered species act as a threatened species, and are under the protection of many other acts and laws. The issue with that thinking is that only protections already in place will subsist, and, according to the Endangered Species Act of 1973, a species under a "threatened" status does not warrant the creation of protective laws. Since present efforts offer a very limited protection of the manatee, it is critical that the ability to establish further efforts be preserved. Furthermore, the symbolic nature of the downgrade may give the public a false impression that the manatee population is stable and sustainable, and give rise to efforts to retract current protective efforts, which are already ruffling