Manatees receive rehabilitation care after boat strikes and cold stunning events, and aquaria housing manatees contribute to conservation while managing the welfare of large, slow-moving herbivores with specialized thermal needs.
Manatee welfare involves both individual rehabilitation and population-level conservation. Cold-stunned manatees require rapid rescue to prevent fatal hypothermia — response networks coordinate rehabilitation at facilities including Mote Marine Laboratory and SeaWorld Orlando. Boat-struck manatees require surgical and wound management care that can involve months of rehabilitation. Aquarium manatee populations that cannot be released serve as conservation ambassadors and educational resources. The seagrass starvation crisis of 2021-2022, which killed over 1,000 manatees, demonstrated the welfare impact of habitat degradation — animals dying of starvation in their historic range. Emergency supplemental feeding programs initiated during this crisis represented a novel welfare intervention for wild populations.