- Named Best Florida Newspaper In Its Class -
VOL 23 No. 10
December 14, 2022
Environmental groups push to return manatees to endangered status A record number of manatee deaths last year due in large part to red tide has prompted conservationists to call for Florida’s manatees to again be classified as endangered. BY LESLIE LAKE SUN CORRESPONDENT | leslielake@aol.com
JOE HENDRICKS | SUN
Brandy Kelly, Tom Powers, Brian Seymour and Nicole Coleman celebrated the Anna Maria General Store’s award-winning decorations.
Bright Holiday Lights contest winners announced The city of Anna Maria encourages residents and business owners to decorate their properties for the holiday season. BY JOE HENDRICKS SUN CORRESPONDENT | jhendricks@amisun.com
ANNA MARIA – The city’s annual Bright Holiday Lights decorating contest produced a first-time residential category winner and a repeat winner in the business category. Former Keep Manatee Beautiful Executive Director Ingrid McClellan judged this year’s entries. The winners were announced during the city’s Santa Stops Here event at City Pier Park on Friday and the winners later received Christmas tree-shaped trophies. James and Andrea Stepan won
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JOE HENDRICKS | SUN
The oversized Christmas ornaments were a new addition to Andrea and James Stepan’s Christmas decorations. the residential category for the decorating efforts they made at their home at 602 Gladiolus St. The residential entries also included Deborah White’s home at 313 North Bay Blvd. and Luann Mar-
shall’s home at 708 Gladiolus St. The Anna Maria General Store repeated as the business category winner, edging out the festive
Since the 2017 downlisting of manatees from endangered to threatened status – and with a record number of deaths of the marine mammals – a push is underway to seek restoration of the manatee’s endangered status and the protections that go along with it. Last month, The Center for Biological Diversity, Harvard Animal Law & Policy Clinic, Miami Waterkeeper and Save the Manatee Club petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to increase protections for West Indian manatees. The petition urges the wildlife service to reclassify the species from threatened to endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). “Since the service prematurely reduced protections in 2017, the species has declined dramatically,” according to a press release from The Center from Biological Diversity, a national non-profit conservation organization with a Florida office in St. Petersburg. “Pollution-fueled algae blooms sparked an ongoing mortality event that killed more than 1,110 Florida manatees in 2021 alone. This represents 19% of the Atlantic population and 13% of all manatees in Florida.” As of October, 726 manatees have died in Florida so far this year. Officials estimate about 6,500 manatees live in waters of the southeastern U.S. “West Indian manatees from Florida to the Caribbean are facing drastic threats from habitat loss, boat strikes, pollution, climate change and toxic algae blooms," said Ben Rankin, a student attorney at the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Clinic. “The restoration of full Endangered Species Act protections is an essential first step in conserving this species everywhere it is found.” Manatees had been protected as “endangered” since 1967 under the ESA. The 2017 reclassification came after the Pacific Legal Foundation, on behalf of Save Crystal River Inc., a recreational boating group, petitioned the FWS, saying the safety measures addressing the manatee’s endangered level of protection were bad for tourism and boating businesses.
SEE LIGHTS, PAGE 11
SEE MANATEES, PAGE 15
RED VELVET, WHITE chocolate
THE FAB FOUR rock AMI at
cheesecake a Christmas treat. 27
‘NO VACANCY’ becomes
Anna Maria Island, Florida
The Center. 35 ‘welcome in’ for Mary and Joseph. 5
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