The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has voted to remove the ’sea cow’ from the endangered list to the merely threatened list. Who owns you baby?!! It seems that nearly every week this year a new article is written about a different species being removed from the endangered species list. Does this mean we have triumphed over habitat destruction and returned most of these beings to healthy population numbers? In most cases, the answer is no. Small recoveries have happened, for relatively short periods of time (read, a few decades at most), compared to the centuries of serious habitat loss that most of these creatures have been suffering. What drives these commissions and Federal agencies to so rabidly thin the members of the endangered species list? Why, land development, of course. And, in this case, recreational boating, coupled with the Florida housing market.

When will we ever learn? More importantly, when will we cease to think of our needs as always being more important than conservation? I think the current administration is piling up the favors to the developers just in case a more environmentally friendly group takes over in 2008.

• Manatees