January 30. 2003

From the Brevard Insider, with permission.

By Capt. Tom McGill

Fishermen, boaters, water sportsmen, waterfront property owners, and citizens of Florida, lend me your ears.

When will you reject the actions of those state and federal agencies and regulation extremists regarding your waterway and property rights that are being systematically taken from you in the name of the manatee? When is enough, enough?

We have sat by and watched our freedom to enjoy our Florida waters snatched from us just as surely as if we were robbed by house invaders in the middle of the night. We didn't take that extra step to confront or even slow them up. The extremists have even misused our judicial system to forward their aims. The state and federal agencies have conspired and entered into agreements with those extremists to deprive the citizens of their rights based on a flawed understanding of the status of the manatee species.

Those scientist-biologists, who are by law required to use the best available scientific information, operate on rhetoric and opinion and ignore directly applicable science. This has happened because we let them elevate an allegedly endangered species to be superior to human rights. This was accomplished because the extremists consistently and unrelentingly have spewed misinformation based on junk science, and we have let them get away with it. Thomas Jefferson said, They who sit idly by and allow their Liberty and Freedom to be taken, deserve neither.

In Florida the USFWS has usurped the authority over the state's sovereign waters, and the Governor and State Legislature let them get away with it. The FF&WCC and the USFWS entered into initially secret agreements with the regulation extremists rather than confront the issues in open court. Who represented us, the citizens, in those negotiations? The Governor of Florida approved the agreement between those extremists and the FF&WCC, and he shouldn't have. Shame on Jeb!

The irony in all of this is that both the state and federal agencies insist on implementing slow speed zones as the method of adding protection for the manatee. Such zones are assumed intuitively to help protect the manatee from harmful collisions with motorboats, but the best available science says otherwise. In Florida's turbid / murky water, such slow speed zones may very well exacerbate the probability of manatee-boat collisions because of the manatee's hearing limitations. There is a scientific basis for why this is so, but those agencies ignore that best available scientific information and rely on their own opinions.

We must confront this stealing of our waterway and property rights and charge those agency leaders and political representatives who allow our rights to be so denigrated, with gross incompetence and malfeasance. Just as in the movie "Network," we need to stand up, go to the open window and shout out, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more." Then go do something about it. Write your elected officials at the county, state, and federal levels, and tell them how you feel and what you expect them to do. For example, why isn't the state of Florida suing the Federal Government over this issue?

Brevard Insider is published 5 times a week except holidays at 1106 Ramblebrook St., Malabar, Fl. 32950. Tel (321) 956-0815. Fax (321) 956-8762. Email ESCMC@aol.com  Copyright 2002. Publisher Pond Press, Inc. Editor: Edward S. Clark. Assistant editor: Dan Warrensford. Contributing editors J. D. Tucker, Michael Moehle, Bob Brewster, David Russell, Chuck Morley, Bill Love. Contrarian: Robert D. Clark. Researcher, Dwight Spencer. Electronic distribution: Tim Wooley. Subscription price $6.50 per month