Horrible news in Louisiana

I was reading this in the news and it just made me sad.....almost all of the babies and unhatched eggs are dead :(

463 pelicans die from oil spill effects
339 being treated at center in Venice
Saturday, June 18, 2005
By Sandra Barbier
St. Bernard/Plaquemines bureau

More than 450 brown pelicans, most of them too young to fly, have died from an oil spill discovered Sunday near Breton National Wildlife Refuge.

The cause of the small but deadly spill from an Amerada Hess Corp. oil platform near West Breton Island has not been determined, company spokesman Greg Beuerman said Friday.

The company coordinated the cleanup and wildlife rescue effort.

Beuerman said 339 pelicans were alive and being treated Friday afternoon at a rehabilitation center set up in Venice.

Efforts to capture oiled birds began Tuesday. Of the 802 birds taken from the island, 463 died, he said.

Beuerman said 47 trained professional wildlife rehabilitators and veterinarians were working at the Venice center.

"The physical washing and cleansing process" of the birds has begun, he said. Beuerman said the rehabilitation would continue for as long as needed.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service supervisory ranger Byron Fortier said that likely will include teaching young birds how to fish once they are able to fly.

"I learned today . . . they will have to establish some sort of ponds or pools with fish. They say adult pelicans will be attracted, and more or less model fishing for the young," he said.

The impact on Louisiana's brown pelican population is unclear. Brown pelicans are listed as an endangered species in the state.

Research biologist Thomas Michot of the National Wetlands Research Center in Lafayette said he had just conducted a nest count at West Breton Island last week.

On June 8, there were 1,300 brown pelican nests, 1,500 royal tern nests, 1,600 laughing gull nests, 750 Caspian tern nests and 40 sandwich tern nests at the island, totaling 5,190 pairs of nesting birds, Michot said.

Fortier said that, except for the pelicans, only a few birds at the island were found with oil on them. The island apparently was overwashed with oil and water during Tropical Storm Arlene, he said.

The storm moved through the Gulf of Mexico and onto shore just west of Pensacola, Fla., on June 11.

He said adult pelicans had started to return to the island by Friday and to resume normal parenting behavior, and that some juvenile pelicans had been left there because they had no oil or little oil on them.

"The decision was made, rather than disrupt the colony by going to retrieve (those) birds, that they would be better off left there."

Beuerman said that a total of 13 barrels of oil spilled, and four to six barrels were recovered. Because it was a light crude, some evaporated "at a fairly significant rate," he said.

The cleanup is nearly complete, Beuerman said. Fortier said some workers are cleaning oil in the marshy part of the island by hand with absorbent pads.

. . . . . . .


Sandra Barbier can be reached at sbarbier@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3836.

Aww damn I hate to see that happen! Oil spills are just so very hard on the environment no matter how small or large they are and how light or heavy the oil, it still plays hell with the birds and so forth.

Blessings on those though that spend long hours struggling to save as many as they can. It must be a long, hard, frustrating heart-breaking endeavor.

~~Jo~~

I talked to a few people that were involved and I was told some awful stories about oil covered baby pelicans in the hot sun. They said that once the oil gets on a baby or egg there is pretty much no saving them. The pelicans were just getting really good numbers too....then something like this happens......I guess they are not coming off of the endangered species list anytime soon :(