Three manatees that spent more than a year gaining weight at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden are now back swimming and thriving in their native Florida waters.
The Manatee Rescue & Rehabilitation Partnership released Lilypad and Vora at Blue Spring State Park earlier this week, and Orchid returned to Crystal River.
For the team at the Cincinnati Zoo, the moment marked the culmination of months of steady care inside Manatee Springs, the zoo’s 120,000-gallon rehabilitation habitat that treats injured or orphaned manatees.
“These releases are the reason we do what we do,” said Lindsay Garrett, a keeper at Manatee Springs. “In the year that manatees Vora, Lilypad and Orchid were here, they each gained more than 250 pounds, with Orchid gaining almost 400 pounds. Our job is to get them to a releasable weight, and that is what we did.”
A big job to do
The manatees arrived in Cincinnati in October 2024 after receiving intensive medical treatment in Florida through the MRP, a coalition of nonprofit, private and government organizations that work together to rescue, treat, rehabilitate and release manatees…