Brown pelican long a symbol of survival

Long before the brown pelican came to symbolize the tragedy of the Gulf oil spill, the giant bird stood for something much greater: survival against all odds.

The state bird of Louisiana was nearly wiped out by pesticides in the 1950s and 1960s. Yet after decades of conservation efforts, the brown pelican just last year was removed from the endangered species list.

"At a time when so many species of wildlife are threatened, we once in a while have an opportunity to celebrate an amazing success story," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar declared on November 11. "Today is such a day. The brown pelican is back."

Now, eight months later, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal stands on the deck of a boat near Pelican Island off the Louisiana coast. He's surveying efforts to protect the state's wetlands. He's ordered the National Guard to begin building barriers in the ocean to try to stop the oil from reaching shore.

Yet Jindal pauses to talk about the brown pelican. The recent images of pelicans, coated in BP oil like grotesque statues, have taken on the symbolism of the spill. Louisiana has long been known as the "Pelican State," with the bird gracing the state flag.

"Here's what's really sad," Jindal said. "For every one of those mother adult pelicans you're saving, there are many more back there that you can't get to. And for every mother pelican you're saving, there may be a nest, there may be eggs that can't be saved.

"And that's the tragedy in this: That for every animal we see, what's this oil doing to their young? What's this oil doing to their life cycles?"

The recovery of the pelicans, before the spill, was largely attributed to the ban of the toxic chemical DDT in 1972. The pesticide traveled down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico.

Three species were most affected: the brown pelican, the bald eagle and peregrine falcon. A component of DDT accumulated in each of those birds and, as a result, it affected the strength of the eggs they laid.

"The result was that you had thinner egg shells in the nest. During incubation, all the species had the tendency to break the eggs more easily," said Dr. Doug Inkey, a senior scientist for the National Wildlife Federation. "This resulted in a huge population decline in all three species."

The bald eagle, peregrine falcon and brown pelican were all listed on the endangered species list. In the case of the brown pelican, wildlife officials in Louisiana and Florida teamed up to help save the bird over a 13-year period. A total of 1,276 young pelicans were captured in Florida and then released at three sites in southeastern Louisiana, according to the Interior Department.

"When their populations were low, we brought in those brown pelicans from Florida," Jindal said. "Now, when we capture them oiled, clean them up and rehabilitate them, we have to release them back in Florida to get away from this oil."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has deployed more than 450 people across the Gulf to respond to the nation's worst environmental disaster. As of Monday, the oil threatened 36 National Wildlife Refuges. Nearly 1,200 birds have been saved, including 728 in Louisiana.

Ron Britton of the Fish and Wildlife Service gave a CNN crew a tour of the marsh islands near Grand Isle, Louisiana, a prime breeding ground where oiled pelicans have been spotted.

"What you're trying to do is get in and get those as quick as you can," Britton told CNN. "But the ones you're missing have less chance each night you can't get back. And the ones we don't get back, we're pretty sure are going somewhere and not surviving."

Oil affects pelicans in various ways. The birds' feathers interlock in a way that helps regulate cooling and, when oil soaks their feathers, the birds lose the ability to do that, biologists say.

"Brown pelicans dive into the water for fish. As they break the water, that's one of the ways they contact the oil. Then, once it's on their feathers, the birds preen daily," said Jennifer Coulson, president of the Orleans Audubon Society.

"When they're preening, they ingest all the BP oil. And so, that's another way they get sick and die."

Inkey of the National Wildlife Federation added, "When they get back to their nests, then they rub some of the oil from their chests to their eggs -- and oil on eggs is not a good mix. It's usually deadly for the developing embryo."

Inkey recently visited a brown pelican-nesting habitat along the Louisiana coast. Hundreds of the birds lived together in nests about 6 feet high in mangrove trees along the shore. There were two layers of protective booms surrounding the island that were "close to being worthless."

"We saw more oil inside the booms than we saw outside the booms," he said. "It was surrounded by a bathtub ring of oil."

His first thought: What's going to happen to the pelicans this year?

"This is the worst-case scenario: It's during breeding season," he said. "We're likely to lose a whole generation of young of many different species. ... It only takes once for a bird to really get messed up in oil for it to have an effect on the nesting success."

He and other biologists said it's far too early to know the full effect of the oil spill on the larger population of brown pelicans -- and whether the bird would ever make it back to the endangered species list. "It would be premature to suggest that," Inkey said.

Biologists said the pelican -- known for its long beak with a hooked tip and its 6-foot wingspan -- is better equipped to survive than smaller birds that ingest oil in greater proportion to their size. In addition, there are five species of sea turtles in the Gulf, and all are endangered or threatened.

"A sea turtle hatchling does not stand a chance," Inkey said.

Regardless, it's a dire situation for all types of wildlife in the region, biologists said.

Yet it was the images of the oil-soaked pelicans that brought home the scope of the disaster -- and its potential devastating consequences. The birds survived DDT, the constant erosion of Louisiana wetlands and Hurricane Katrina.

Inkey already had returned from his visit when the photos first appeared. "I got sick in my stomach," he said. "I had seen oiled pelicans, but not like that. The ones I saw were simply gray. These were just heartbreaking."

Source:
Cable News Network, "Brown pelican long a symbol of survival", accessed June 15, 2010

Gulf's oil-soaked birds: Rescue or kill?

Some experts see it as a well-meaning flight of fancy. To others, cleaning a bird soaked with oil from the Gulf of Mexico is the only chance it has for survival.

In the case of the brown pelican, removed last year from the endangered species list, it may be the only way to save the entire lot.

"It's like triage on a battlefield. You have to weigh where you can have your best success," said Ginette Hemley, the World Wildlife Fund's senior vice president for conservation strategies and science.

Earlier this week, a German biologist painted a less rosy picture in an interview with the magazine Der Spiegel. Silvia Gaus of the Wattenmeer National Park said it was more humane to euthanize the birds because they will suffer a painful death regardless of whether the oil is scrubbed from their feathers.

"According to serious studies, the middle-term survival rate of oil-soaked birds is under 1 percent," Gaus told the magazine. "We, therefore, oppose cleaning birds."

The statement spotlighted a similar statement in 2002 from the World Wildlife Fund, which said it was reluctant to advise cleaning birds after the Prestige spill off the coast of Spain. In that incident, a sunken tanker dumped about 20 million gallons of oil off the Galician coast.

The fund issued a statement earlier this week saying its 2002 remarks could not fairly be applied to the situation in the Gulf of Mexico. Thursday marked Day 52 of the gusher.

"In many cases, WWF believes there is value in trying to clean and rehabilitate wildlife, especially if productive, viable adult animals can recover from exposure to oil," the release said. "But every situation is different, and it is too soon to fully calculate the impact the Gulf spill will have on the long-term viability of populations of many species in the region."

Hemley said it could take up to three years to determine the spill's total impact on wildlife.

According to Wednesday's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service numbers, rescue officials have collected 1,075 birds. Of those, 442 were alive and "visibly oiled." Another 633 were found dead, and 109 of those were visibly oiled.

The report states BP's Deepwater Horizon spill is not responsible for all dead birds.

"How long will the birds survive that have been cleaned and released? We don't know yet," Hemley said, explaining it depends on a variety of factors.

Included are how quickly the bird was saved, the bird's age and size and the length of exposure to the oil, she said.

Lee Hollingsworth, a wildlife adviser with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in Wales, said other concerns are the level of saturation and how much oil a bird has ingested.

Seabirds' feathers are weatherproofed by natural oils, stimulated by a gland in their lower back. This is why birds nuzzle their tail feathers when they're preening, Hollingsworth said.

"If that gland is damaged," he said, "then that no longer secretes oil."

Other rescue methods, such as holding the birds in captivity to protect them or moving them to a new habitat, can be dangerous as well, he said. Captivity is stressful, and changing a bird's environment introduces it to new prey and predators, whereas it was accustomed to its food and enemies in its natural habitat.

Many birds are quite specialized, he said, and don't do well in artificial, foreign or zoo-like environs.

The Welsh society joined the World Wildlife Fund in 2002, saying that heavily oiled birds could not be helped.

But on Thursday, Hollingsworth said the 8-year-old statement was specific to the situation in Spain, which happened in chilly November. The Gulf is warm, which could bode well for the birds, he said.

"The majority of [birds affected by the Prestige incident] didn't survive anyway. That, again, is due to the ingestion of oil and weatherproofing," he said.

Hollingsworth said many people cleaning birds are working for charities that don't receive much government funding, and it's important for such groups to prioritize their efforts and target areas where they'll do the most good.

In the Gulf of Mexico, that may mean focusing on brown pelicans. The birds, which are native to the Atlantic Coast and eastern Gulf, spent almost 40 years on the endangered species list until last year.

When salvaging just a few birds is so vital to the survival of a species, Hollingsworth said, "something has got to be done, and of course it's worth saving the bird."

Despite conflicting studies on the viability of washing birds, there are plenty of success stories. The International Bird Rescue and Research Center, which is working in the Gulf, cites several examples on its website.

After the 2000 Treasure spill off the coast of South Africa, rescuers saved 21,000 African penguins and released about 19,500 birds back into their colonies, according to the center.

The website notes rescuers also saved 32 snowy plovers after the 1999 New Carissa spill off the Oregon coast, 180 king eiders after a 1996 spill near Alaska's Pribilof Islands and 175 waterfowl after California's Santa Clara River spill of 1991.

"It may seem like a small number but it was significant to us, as we knew what those animals endured being covered in very heavy and thick oil," wrote Jay Holcomb, the center's executive director.

Hemley said the wildlife fund would generally "err on the side of recovering birds." After all, she said, it's not costly to rinse the birds and let them rest before scrubbing them with Dawn, the dishwashing liquid whose motto once was, "Takes grease out of your way."

Rescuers are always looking to improve on their methods for saving animals, and they've learned a lot since the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill off the coast of Southern California, she said.

"The chances of success increase every time we deal with one of these unfortunate situations," Hemley said. "Hopefully we're getting better at this."

Source:
Cable Network News, "Gulf's oil-soaked birds: Rescue or kill?", accessed June 10, 2010