Take Action
Manatees face growing threats from habitat loss, boat strikes, water pollution, and changing environmental conditions. While research, rescue, and education are all vital parts of manatee conservation, strong laws and public policies are essential to ensuring their long-term survival.
One of the most powerful ways you can help is by contacting your elected officials to advocate for the protection of manatees and their habitats. Policymakers rely on hearing from constituents to understand what issues matter most. By joining our email list, you’ll receive timely alerts when legislation that could impact manatees is under consideration, along with resources to help you take quick, effective action. Together, we can ensure that manatees have a safe future for generations to come.
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Ongoing Action Issues
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) provides manatees, a species listed as “threatened,” with essential protections. By designating critical habitat and prohibiting “take” which includes harassment, killing, and serious damage to habitat, the ESA has been instrumental in preventing manatees’ extinction. With threats such as habitat loss, pollution, watercraft strikes, and harassment, manatees need the protections of a strong and functional ESA more than ever.
Some members of Congress are advancing the ESA Amendments Act (H.R. 1897), a dangerous bill that would weaken the ESA in many ways, including by damaging the definition of “best available science” in protecting critical habitat and blocking the important “4(d)” rule under which threatened species—like manatees—receive essential protections under the ESA. Depleting scientific integrity in the Act would undermine recovery efforts not only for manatees, but for hundreds of imperiled species nationwide.
In recent years, manatees have experienced:
- Loss of essential warm-water habitat that manatees need to survive the winter
- An unusual mortality event driven by starvation linked to seagrass loss
- Increasing boat strikes and habitat degradation
- Growing pressure from warming waters and coastal development
At this time, we should be strengthening protections for manatees—not weakening the law that helps keep them from extinction.
This is why we have joined with the Endangered Species Coalition to raise our voices together in support of manatees and all imperiled species:
Save the Manatee Club is a proud member of the Reunite the Rivers Coalition. After more than 50 years, it’s time to breach the obsolete dam and allow the Ocklawaha River to be free-flowing and connected to Silver Springs and the St. Johns again.
Take the pledge(external link) to stand with us, and countless other Floridians, as we support and advocate for the restoration of the Ocklawaha River during the 2026 Florida Legislative Session.
Be Fertilizer-Free For Manatees
Nutrient pollution in Florida’s waterways is a critical problem, fueling repeated harmful algal blooms in coastal waters. In the Indian River Lagoon, a critical manatee habitat, such harmful algal blooms have destroyed native seagrass, resulting in the deaths by starvation of hundreds of manatees. An unprecedented 1,100 manatees died in Florida in 2021 with the trend continuing into 2022. While seagrass has started to come back in areas of the Indian River Lagoon, we must stay vigilant and do our part to preserve water quality, both in the state and around the world.
Together, we can protect these critical habitats for manatees, other aquatic life, and our own future generations by reducing human sources of pollution such as fertilizers, improperly treated sewage, leaking septic systems, and stormwater runoff. While Save the Manatee Club works with our partners to strengthen policies that protect water quality, the individual actions of each Florida resident can make a big difference for the health of our waterways. Do your part: take the pledge to be Fertilizer-Free for Manatees!
