by Alicia M Prater PhD

Created on: June 17, 2010

Newsweek asked the question “should we clean oiled animals?” in early June 2010. The premise is that it may be more humane to put the oil covered creatures out of their misery than to torture them with the stress of capture and soap scrubs when their futures are so uncertain anyway – they have lost their habitats, their nests, and possibly their health. However, saving the animals that can be cleaned is an important step in limiting the already widespread devastation caused by an oil spill, particularly for endangered species and those with limited habitats.

In the first 8 weeks of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 800 birds and 350 turtles were counted as dead, 400 of which were Brown Pelicans. This is a far cry from the immense scope of death experienced after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in the 1980s, when a quarter of a million birds were reported to have died, but marine biologists seem certain that the number of actual dead in the Gulf during that time was much higher. Oiled birds were seen to exhibit odd behavior, retreating into the marshes, probably to die and sink.

The Brown Pelican was a success story for species surviving from the brink of extinction, but it has become a symbol of the damage inflicted by the 2010 Gulf spill. This small species of pelican, the only one to swoop into the water for fish, was once an endangered bird, even extinct in Louisiana by the 1960s, a disagreeable situation for a state that touted the Brown Pelican as its state bird. After the use of the pesticide DDT was halted, the pelicans began returning to their nesting grounds along the Gulf coast. In 2005, a smaller oil spill killed 700 Brown Pelicans, setting back efforts to increase the population of this feathered sea farer in its marshes since the 1970s. The most vulnerable barrier islands along Louisiana’s coastline that were inundated with thick crude from the Deepwater Horizon were home to an estimated 34,000 birds, including 1000 Brown Pelicans that nested on the ground among the marsh grasses and shrubs.

It has almost become a cliché – the idea of environmentalists saving every animal they can. But what happens on one level of the ecological chain eventually affects us as well. Birds are not the only creatures to flee the oil - sharks, dolphins, fish, turtles, and other marine life were seen inundating shallower waters along the coast. This uses up the oxygen the fish need, reducing birds’ food supply – this also puts predators in closer quarters with their prey, reducing all of the populations. These are the healthy and non-oiled creatures dying indirectly from the oil. If the oiled birds and other animals are not saved when they can be, there will be hardly any animals left when the disaster is cleaned up. An inevitable dead zone in the once fertile Gulf fishing areas.

Cleaning the oiled birds preserves some of the ecosystem damaged in an oil spill, limiting the population decline caused by death, loss of habitat, and migration. In the case of the Brown Pelican, it prevents a species from once again reaching the brink of extinction because of human interference. Even the Newsweek article speculating on how useful it is to clean the birds admitted that the option to simply put them out of their misery is not reasonable for many species, especially those suffering from already declining populations. The human guilt would just be too much.

Some information is from Daily Caller, Houston Chronicle, and the Examiner (New Orleans Headlines)

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