Feds Call Manatee Settlement Illegal

WASHINGTON, DC, July 26, 2002 (ENS) - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) argued in court this week that a settlement reached between the agency and a coalition of environmental groups over endangered manatees last year was illegal.

In January 2001, conservation groups including the Save the Manatee Club, Defenders of Wildlife, The Humane Society of the United States, and the Sierra Club, won a landmark settlement agreement compelling the USFWS to institute measures to protect manatees.

This week, the USFWS called the settlement illegal, saying it "unlawfully" constrains the discretion of the federal government to take no action to protect manatees. Earlier this month, federal Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled that the federal government had illegally delayed designation of manatee sanctuaries and refuges, intended to reduce mortality due to boat strikes.

The USFWS claims that it is avoiding measures to reduce collisions with boats that kill dozens of manatees every year, in order to allow the state of Florida to implement its own protections. In May 2001, Florida Governor Jeb Bush wrote to the USFWS asking for a delay in the creation of new refuges and sanctuaries to give the state time to design and implement new boating regulations.

Judge Sullivan ruled that no such delay was allowed under the settlement, and that potential state action did not excuse the federal government from acting, particularly in places where the state does not intend to enact manatee protections.

"Just when you think this administration has bent over just about as far backward as it can in order to avoid its legal obligations to protect manatees, something completely off the wall like this comes along," said Eric Glitzenstein of Meyer & Glitzenstein, the lead attorney representing the coalition of manatee supporters that had won the settlement agreement.

Glitzenstein noted that the state was making no efforts to protect manatees in some of the areas where mortality is the highest, including Lee, Collier and Duval counties. Lee County set an all time record for manatee deaths from boat strikes last year, and is on a similar pace in 2002.

Statewide, there have been 67 manatee deaths as of July 12, more than 50 percent above the average for this time of the year.

"To claim that the proper way to comply with a court order is to pretend the whole thing never happened marks a new low - and a novel approach - in [Interior Secretary] Gale Norton's contorted attempts to avoid complying with laws that say her department needs to protect species at risk."

Judge Sullivan's ruling made special note of the role that politics appears to have played in the USFWS's violation of the settlement agreement, which took the agency and the conservation groups nine months to reach.

"Whatever the political ramifications," wrote Sullivan, "such a justification cannot excuse a violation of the agreement to designate areas throughout Florida by the date established by the agreement."

The Department of Justice told the court that in agreeing to the settlement, the USFWS "bargained away its discretion, binding itself to some substantive outcome in its rule making before actually engaging in that rule making."

"Just when you think this administration has bent over just about as far backward as it can in order to avoid its legal obligations to protect manatees, something completely off the wall like this comes along," said Eric Glitzenstein

That legal obligation is outlined in Amendment MMXXLVII to the Constitution:

Article MMXXLVII
Section 18a.

The Federal Government must use all powers at their disposal to ensure that no manatee gets bopped on the head by a boat. This amendment supercedes the 10th amendment, which nobody really liked all that much anyway.

You are right. Manatee bopping is strictly against the Consitution. It ranks right up there with the second amendment protection as one of the more serious crimes against humanity, or-er, manatee.

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