Protecting birds while cleaning the Gulf
Brown pelican (photo by Alan Wilson)
“The Gulf doesn’t have the decades it took to resolve the legal wrangling that followed the Exxon Valdez spill,” says Mike Parr, VP at the American Bird Conservancy (ABC). “The hydrology of the Mississippi Delta and the surrounding area is already facing dire threats from climate-change, erosion, and hurricanes. Let’s not repeat the same mistakes as we made in Alaska twenty years ago.”
Parr is the author of a new report issued today by ABC, Gulf Oil Spill: Field Survey Report and Recommendations. The study documents what helps birds, as well as what hurts them, in the oil damaged regions of the gulf.
Briefly, here are the five essential lessons learned from clean-up activities so far:
- Use “ocean boom” wherever possible; pick up oiled absorbent boom more quickly.
- Fence and protect sensitive beach nesting areas; reduce disturbance to birds from cleanup operations.
- Deploy adequately sized and equipped oil skimmers close to the coast with better coordinated real-time oil reports to eliminate oil BEFORE it hits beaches.
- Create a staging and recovery area for heavily oiled birds close to the coast.
- Restore eroded island habitat for nesting birds.
For full details and explanations of the these key points, you can download a copy of ABC’s report for free from their Website.
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