Newswise — Ken Rosenberg, director of conservation science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and a specialist on the conservation of birds throughout the Western Hemisphere, comments on the ecological threat posed by the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Rosenberg says:
“The potential danger is unfathomable, because we don’t yet know how the leak can be stopped and how big the spill will get. It's a full moon, a high tide, and it's bringing the oil on a free ride right into the coastal salt marshes on a southerly wind. It is also peak migration season for birds crossing the gulf — tens of thousands of exhausted shorebirds are going to be arriving in the next two weeks. They're flying over water and stopping to refuel on the beaches and in the estuaries along the Gulf Coast directly in the path of this massive spill.
“The big picture view here is: our thirst for fossil fuel means we’ve been playing Russian roulette with our environment, and the gun just went off.
“Birds are an important first indicator of environmental health and the old analogy of the canary in the coal mine is really relevant here. A lot of these birds are going to die, but that’s just the beginning of the story of what might happen to the coastal environment for both wildlife and people if the oil doesn’t stop flowing.
“Immediately, there will be devastation to the breeding bird colonies along the coast; thousands of brown pelicans that were just taken off the endangered species list last year, lots of other colonial water birds, such as royal terns, reddish egrets and roseate spoonbills that are nesting right now and have eggs. They are dependent on inshore fish and other marine life for their survival and to feed their young – these bird populations could be devastated as the oil comes ashore. All the Gulf Coast ecosystems remain extremely fragile because they still haven’t recovered from a series of devastating hurricanes.
“Wherever the oil hits, it’s going to cause reproductive failure and likely kill large numbers of birds. There will be a lot of people mobilized to try to save individual birds by bringing them into rehab and de-oiling them – and there will be some success in saving individual birds. But whether that can save the breeding populations in these areas we don't know.
“If the oil then comes into the coastal marshes and the inshore ecosystems and kills the oyster beds and the shrimp and the fish nurseries, then there are much longer-lasting effects not only on birds but on an entire way of life for people of this region.”
RSS