Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Manatees, 'only' threatened

The manatee is no longer an endangered species. At least, that's what the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) concluded after some years of studying the manatee's case. According to such office, the amount of manatees has increased in the past 5 years to an amount enough to consider the species a "threatened" one, rather than an "endangered" one.

If manatees understood news, would they be happy about it? Or would they rather be worried? To some extent, the news about the increasing population of manatees is a very happy one, but I wonder whether such announcement will serve prelude to allow the hunt of manatees later on.
The authorities, of course, deny such theory, arguing that the protection for manatees will be kept. The question that comes to my mind then is: For how long?

For now, it looks that the gracious manatees are safe from following the same fate that extinguished the poor Baiji in China. Will that last for a long time? I hope it does, but that definitely depends on a lot of factors, mainly predation by humans.

It's always a pleasure to hear good news like this one anyway.

Click here to read the original note from The Guardian.

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