In a bid to alleviate mounting pressures on critical care facilities for local manatee populations, the global entertainment behemoth, the Walt Disney Company is adopting a new approach to the long-established manatee care programme ran out of its flagship theme park, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

Through a revised partnership with the Manatee Rescue and Rehabilitation Program and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Disney has confirmed it will be transitioning from long-term permanent manatee care, to a more short-term critical and acute care centre.

The change, Disney has said, has been driven by the rising need to provide urgent care for local manatee populations, a species that is currently only narrowly avoiding extinction and the focus of major conservation concerns among local organisations.

The change to its programme has already seen Disney move its more long-term residents to new facilities. In doing so, however, the Park has been able to “double the number of manatees” it can now take care of through its rehabilitation programme.

“Critical care facilities that first take them in are getting overwhelmed and overloaded, so we’re providing a safety valve,” said Disney Animal Health Director, Geoff Pye who notes that thanks to the changes, the site will now be able to rehabilitate between six to eight manatees at a time.

The change-up will also allow Disney to track each of the manatees as they move through its re-aligned rehabilitation centre and are released back into the wild. To do so, the park will be leaning on its long-established partnerships with both the Manatee Rescue and Rehabilitation Partnership and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

[This will allow us] to understand whether we have been successful or not,” said Pye. “There’s a lot of joy when we release them after their six to nine months here, but when you hear a year later that they’re thriving out there, that’s what really makes us happy.”

Florida has been handling a growing crisis among its local manatee populations for a number of years now. In a recently released manatee mortality report compiled by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, it was detailed that 72 manatee deaths were recorded in the month of January 2025 alone. 

The West Indian manatee, a species to which the Florida sub-species of manatee belongs has endured a rather tough past three years in which more than 2,000 have reportedly starved to death in what has been listed as ‘devastating die-off event.’ Behind the deaths, conservation groups have shared a growing concern over water quality degradation that has led to a depletion in food resources, such as the seagrass that once grew in abundance around the Florida coastline.

Campaigners have pointed the finger at unchecked pollution from sources such as wastewater treatment discharges, leaking septic systems, and fertilizer run-off as the reason behind the degradation of Florida’s water. It’s this that has, in turn, led to the “precipitous decline” in seagrass around its coast, fuelling the collapse of a regular food source around the Indian River Lagoon – an area once filled with a healthy population of local manatees.   

Almost 2,000 manatees died in 2021 and 2022 combined, representing more than 20% of all manatees in Florida.

Manatees feeling the strain of a collapsing ecosystem are routinely placed in rehabilitation centres. Two such manatees currently receiving care from the Disney programme are Cider and Mino, a male and female currently under medical surveillance at the centre. Once back to health, they will be released back into the waters.

“We have a great team of really skilled veterinarians who help provide care for them, we have state of the art facilities and equipment to diagnose any medical issues and then treat them accordingly,” said Jen Flower, a Disney Clinical Veterinarian.

“Our recent shift to shorter term care is going to really help the manatees even more than before. So, we’re able to get manatees in rehab, rehabilitate them, and release some relatively quickly so then we can get more manatees in.

“The number of animals that are going to come in and out is going to be dramatically increased, which is great because every animal we send back into the wild is increasing wild populations. This change is really exciting for us and it’s really exciting for our guests as well,” she told Click Orlando.

Last month, the US Fish and Wildlife Services proposed two separate Endangered Species Act listing for the two West Indian manatee subspecies, recognising the Florida manatee as a ‘threatened’ species and the Antillean manatee as an ‘endangered’ species. Previously, the West Indian manatee was considered to be one species and therefore listed as one ‘threatened’ species. 

Florida manatees are found along the US Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts and in northern parts of the Caribbean from the Bahamas to Turks and Caicos. Both the Florida and Antillean manatee face significant threats including watercraft collisions, habitat loss, seagrass decline, coastal development, human interactions, harmful algal blooms, and climate change impacts.

Florida manatees are particularly vulnerable to losing warm-water refuges, while Antillean manatees face additional challenges from poaching and limited genetic diversity.

“For almost 60 years, the Service has worked closely with conservation partners to save Florida and Antillean manatees from extinction,” said thee US Fish and Wildlife Service’s southeast regional director, Mike Oetker. “The best available science always drives our decision-making, and we are committed to ensuring the protection and recovery of both subspecies of the West Indian manatee.”

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