Rescued Twice, This Manatee Finally Swam Free
A starving orphan manatee named Alpine was rescued from Florida's Crystal River, rehabbed for two years, released - then rescued all over again. On June 23rd he finally swam free for good.
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Three years ago, rescuers pulled a starving orphan calf out of Crystal River, Florida — too small, too weak, to survive on his own. Today, that same manatee is swimming free in that same river, nearly two hundred pounds heavier than the day he arrived at his final rehab stop.
But Alpine's road home wasn't a straight line. He had to be rescued not once, but twice, before he finally made it back to open water.
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Florida's manatees are gentle, slow-moving giants, and that's exactly what makes their world so dangerous. Boat strikes, cold snaps, and tangled fishing gear send hundreds of them into rescue centers every year. For decades their numbers dropped so low they were listed as endangered. Crystal River, on Florida's Gulf Coast, is ground zero for their recovery — the only place in the country where it's legal to swim alongside a wild manatee.
Alpine was one of those manatees. Found as an orphaned calf in Crystal River back in 2023, he was taken in by ZooTampa, nursed through two years of rehabilitation, and released back into the wild in 2025. It should have been the end of his story. Instead, caretakers found him underweight and struggling again, and he came back in for a second round of care — first at SeaWorld, then at the Jacksonville Zoo and Botanical Gardens, into a facility that had just opened its doors: the brand-new J. Wayne and Delores Barr Weaver Manatee River habitat, a 330,000-gallon refuge built to give rescued manatees room to heal. When Alpine arrived, he weighed just 570 pounds. By the day he was cleared to go home, he weighed 752.
On June 23rd, a team from the Jacksonville Zoo, the Manatee Rescue and Rehabilitation Program, and Florida's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission carried Alpine down to the water's edge, fitted him with a tracking device so biologists can watch how he adjusts, and let him go. He was the first manatee ever released from that new habitat — and the 37th manatee the Jacksonville Zoo has returned to the wild since the program began.
"Alpine's release is an incredibly meaningful milestone for our team and for the new Manatee River habitat," said David Hagan, the zoo's Chief Life Sciences Officer. "We are grateful to the Manatee Rescue and Rehabilitation Program and the FWC for their coordination and partnership, and proud to play a role in Alpine's journey back home to Crystal River."
Here's the bigger picture: Florida's manatees are no longer endangered. Thanks to decades of this kind of patient teamwork between zoos, wildlife agencies, and rehab centers, their population has climbed to more than eight thousand, and their status has moved from endangered to threatened. Alpine isn't a headline about a species saved in one dramatic moment — he's proof of what it actually takes: two rescues, two years, and a network of people who refused to give up on one animal until he could go home on his own.
Sources: actionnewsjax.com · aol.com
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