Craig Pittman - Manatee Insanity - Gables

Start: Oct 5 2010 8:00 pm

Why is the manatee just as imperiled today as it was 40 years ago?
Loveable or loathed? Poster child for conservation efforts or impediment
to development? Nuisance or in need of protection? For the past two
decades, the quiet manatee has been a flash point of frequent
environmental debates. Included on the very first endangered species
list issued in 1967, the docile creatures have stirred curiosity and
passions for more than a hundred years. They are Florida's most famous
endangered species, as well as its most controversial. Manatees appear
on hundreds of license plates, attract hordes of tourists, and expose
the uneasy relationships between science and the law and between freedom
and responsibility like no other animal. As passions have flared and
resentments have grown, the battle over manatee protection has evolved
into a war, and no reporter has followed the story more closely than
Craig Pittman. He's flown with scientists trying to count manatees from
overhead. He's been on the water with the leader of the biggest
pro-boater group. He's observed biologists dissecting the animals and
politicians discussing their fate. Manatee Insanity provides the
first in-depth history of the attempts to provide legal protection for
the manatee. Along the way, Pittman takes a close look at the major and
minor players in the dispute, from Jacques-Yves Cousteau to Jeb Bush,
from Jimmy Buffett to O. J. Simpson, from a popular children's book
author to a federal lawman who dressed in a gorilla suit for the
ultimate undercover assignment.