Conservation Groups Move to Sue Federal Government Over Long-Delayed Manatee Habitat Protections

Three conservation groups have put the federal government on notice that they will sue over its failure to finish expanding protected habitat for Florida's manatees. The Center for Biological Diversity, Save the Manatee Club and Defenders of Wildlife filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday, Nov. 9, arguing that the agency has blown a legal deadline to finalize new critical habitat for the Florida manatee and the Antillean manatee of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.

The habitat that now protects Florida's manatees was drawn in 1976. The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed modernizing it in September 2024, adding nearly 1 million acres in Florida and almost 80,000 acres in Puerto Rico, according to WUSF. Under the Endangered Species Act, the groups say, the agency had one year to finish that work. Two years later, the rule is still not final.

What the groups claim

The notice alleges violations of Section 4 of the Endangered Species Act, the part of the law that governs listing species and designating their critical habitat. According to WUSF, it states that Section 4 requires the service to finalize a proposal to revise or designate critical habitat within one year of publication, and that two years have passed since the service published its proposals for both manatees.

A notice of intent is a required first step. Citizens must give federal agencies 60 days' warning before suing under the Endangered Species Act, which gives the agency a window to act. If the service does not finalize the habitat rule in that time, the groups can file suit in federal court.

Ragan Whitlock, a Florida attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, told WUSF that manatees cannot recover without protected places. "It's clear the Trump administration is doing everything it can to abdicate its responsibilities under the Endangered Species Act," he said, adding that the groups will keep fighting for protections regardless of who is in office.

Elizabeth Neville, director of environmental law and policy at Save the Manatee Club, said the greatest long-term threats are the loss and degradation of habitat, especially warm-water refuges and seagrass. "Modernizing 50-year-old critical habitat designations is essential to ensuring manatees can recover and thrive for the next 50 years and beyond," she said, according to WUSF. She told WLRN that manatees "are still very much not out of the woods."

Why critical habitat matters in Florida

Critical habitat is the area the federal government identifies as essential to a protected species' survival. It does not ban development or boating, but federal agencies must make sure that the projects they permit, fund or carry out do not destroy or badly damage it. In Florida, that touches everything from dock and marina permits to dredging and seawall work that needs a federal permit.

The 1976 designation listed waterways then known to be manatee concentration areas in 16 counties, including Citrus, Hillsborough, Lee, Collier, Miami-Dade, Brevard, Volusia and Duval. When the same three groups first threatened to sue over it in August 2021, they argued that it does not describe the specific features manatees need, such as seagrass beds or warm-water springs. Their effort to revise it dates to a 2008 petition. The 2024 proposal followed.

The die-offs behind the push

The groups point to a decade of losses. More than 3,600 manatees have died in Florida since 2021, including 632 in 2025, according to WUSF. The worst year was 2021, when a record 1,101 died, many of them starving in the Indian River Lagoon after pollution killed the seagrass they depend on. Whitlock said habitat loss and pollution have driven six major die-offs in the last 20 years.

The timing is pointed. Each winter, cold fronts like the one forecast for Florida this weekend send manatees crowding into springs, power plant outflows and other warm-water sites, the kind of refuge the groups want written into the habitat rule.

The listing fight

The habitat delay runs alongside a dispute over the manatee's status. The West Indian manatee was among the first marine mammals placed on the endangered species list in the 1960s. In 2017, after counts put the population around 6,000, federal officials downlisted it from endangered to threatened, a decision conservation groups opposed.

After the 2021 die-off, conservation groups including the Center petitioned in November 2022 to return manatees to endangered status. In January 2025, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed splitting the species into two listed entities: the Florida manatee, which it proposed to keep as threatened, and the Antillean manatee, which it proposed to uplist to endangered. "The service got that determination half correct," Whitlock told WUSF.

Seaquarium marina: a third study warns of risks

The legal notice landed as Miami-Dade County moves toward approving a lease for a large new marina at the old Miami Seaquarium on Virginia Key. WLRN reported Monday that a third study, this one by Save the Manatee Club, warns that a busy marina near seagrass flats and a neighboring wildlife refuge would put manatees at risk.

The study relies on county surveys of manatee activity conducted three to four times a year from 1993 to 2024, plus Florida Power & Light tracking of tagged manatees along the Atlantic coast. It challenges a study commissioned by developer David Martin and conducted by Jerry Ault, an emeritus professor at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School, which relied on once-a-year state aerial flights and found manatees use the area infrequently. Beth Brady, the club's director of science and conservation, told WLRN that the developer's interpretations are "extremely flawed" and that boats kept at a marina do not stay at the docks.

Martin's team stood by its findings and said in a statement that the county's Department of Environmental Resources Management had not provided the data despite repeated requests since August. The statement said Ault concluded that the waters around the Seaquarium are not an area where manatees frequently transit or congregate.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has also weighed in. The original plan called for 325 wet slips and 500 dry slips, some for boats up to 200 feet long. FWC concluded manatees frequently use the surrounding waters and recommended cutting the total to 250, a number Save the Manatee Club backs. Martin has since proposed 295 wet slips and about 550 dry storage spaces, WLRN reported.

A county committee scheduled a hearing for 10:30 a.m. Tuesday on asking commissioners to waive the usual four-week notice and two independent appraisals for the lease. Critics also object that a land use application covers about 35 acres of the original Seaquarium footprint but not the 56 acres of bay bottom in the marina lease, keeping the project under the 50-acre mark that triggers more rigorous review. Two residents, attorneys Greg Frankel and Aaron Stauber, have sued to force a referendum under the county's Save Our Parks charter amendment. A 2024 county report found more than 10,000 citations were issued in manatee speed zones between 2019 and 2024, WLRN reported.

What's next

The 60-day clock on the notice runs into early January. If the Fish and Wildlife Service does not finalize the Florida and Antillean manatee habitat rules by then, the groups say they will file suit, which would likely ask a federal judge to set a deadline. A final listing decision on the January 2025 proposal is also still pending. In Miami-Dade, the Seaquarium lease and related land use changes head to the full County Commission, while the residents' referendum lawsuit remains in court.