In a step forward for one of Florida’s oldest environmental battles, the U.S. Forest Service says it will take another look at the impact that a 44-year-old dam is having on wild species which migrate and live in the Ocklawaha River.

Earthjustice’s legal action aims to protect imperiled manatees and shortnose sturgeon, two species which are blocked from migrating in the Ocklawaha River because the dam operated by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection turns a 16-mile stretch of the river into the unnatural Rodman Impoundment.

The dam is an outdated vestige from a long-abandoned federal project called the Cross Florida Barge Canal, which intended to connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Gulf of Mexico. Although that project was halted by President Richard Nixon back in 1971, the dam has stayed in place, impounding the Ocklawaha and flooding 9,000 acres of floodplain forest, including approximately 600 acres in the Ocala National Forest.