Pillar coral is now "endangered" under the ESA

The National Marine Fisheries Service issued a final rule on Monday to change the status of one coral species from threatened to endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). We spoke about what this means for the pillar coral with Elise Bennett, the Florida and Caribbean director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

As of 2020, only an estimated 20 individuals of pillar coral existed in Florida waters.

Listen to this full show here:

“Oh, pillar coral are what every five-year-old dreams a mermaid castle to be. They grow in these golden tan rounded pillars that reach up towards the water’s surface and a really particularly large colony can be almost stately. And then the polyps have these tentacles that are often exposed that give them kind of a soft glow. They’re really beautiful corals and and truly distinct from many of the other corals you might see in the waters around Florida and like some of the other corals, there are really a lot of stressors on pillar corals,” Bennett told WMNF.

“When the pillar coral was originally listed as threatened back in 2014, experts recognized that this species is already inherently vulnerable to extinction. And that’s because it’s a naturally rare species. It has relatively low reproduction and it has a reduced ability to recover from mortality events that might be driven by coral bleaching or disease and this vulnerability was projected to increase in the future. And so at that time, the National Marine Fisheries Service determined that the species wasn’t in danger of extinction now, but likely to become in danger in the foreseeable future.

“Well, that determination changed after a review that was published in 2022. And in that review, the agency took a deeper look back when they listed the species in 2014, they found there wasn’t a lot of information about declines of populations that we knew existed. And they also thought that the coral would be resistant to coral bleaching at least in some areas across its range.

“But this 2022 assessment showed that those assumptions really weren’t true that they found that population trends were decreasing, looking at studies in Florida and in Columbia, they found that the range had diminished with the loss of almost all of the wild colonies in Florida, which is pretty serious here for our state. They also found that the species was highly susceptible to disease, like one called stony coral tissue loss disease, which has really devastated populations in the northern Caribbean.

“And following the impact of this disease, the agency had determined that it’s likely functionally extinct here in Florida, which means it still exists in the wild, but they’re concerned about its ability to reproduce and it’s really not a significant feature of the ecosystem any more.

“And then finally, I think many folks are familiar with the impacts of coral bleaching and they found that the susceptibility is higher than we had thought. And this threat is driven by climate change and warmer ocean temperatures.”
– Elise Bennett on WMNF’s Tuesday Cafe

Also on Tuesday Café (Dec. 17) – Tampa Bay SDS says USF is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

The activist group Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society or SDS has a rally Tuesday to announce that it is accusing the University of South Florida of violating its members’ civil rights.

We talked about that and what led up to it with our guests, Vicky Tong, a member of Students for a Democratic Society and Collin Poirot, their lawyer.

“Last week on December 11th, we filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights asking them to investigate USF for its discrimination against SDS and other students due to their associations with Palestinians and other students of color on campus and their ongoing campaigns to defend DEI programs as well as multiple demands related directly to Palestine such as divesting from Israel’s genocide.

“The Title VI: it’s Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Basically, what it says is if you’re an individual who is trying to participate in a program or activity that receives federal funding, you are protected from being denied the benefits of participation in that program, being denied equal access to that program or being subjected to discrimination within that program or activity on the basis of race, color or national origin.

“So our argument here is, you know, half of USF’s funding for research comes directly from the federal government, from federal grants. All of that money requires that us f not discriminate, not prevent students from accessing education on an equal basis, not harass, not retaliate against students based on their national origin or association with students of a particular national origin.

“So that’s what we’re asking the, the Office for Civil Rights to investigate and, and hopefully we’ll be able to reach some, some remedies that can improve the conditions on campus for these students.”
– Collin Poirot, lawyer for Tampa Bay SDS