Galveston Bay Oil Spill: What We Birders Can Do (You don't need to be a birder, though!)

[XemaSab]

The March 22 spill of 168,000 gallons of highly toxic bunker fuel into Galveston Bay can be expected to take a huge toll on migrating, nesting, and still-wintering birds. If you want to donate money to help, Houston Audubon seems to be the go-to organization right now. But whether or not you can make a financial contribution, if you spend time on the Texas coast this spring, you can make a vitally important difference in what happens next, by submitting the sightings of every oiled bird you see into eBird. Enter the species, numbers, time, and place as always, and for each bird click “Add Details,” then click “Oiled Birds.” Provide photos whenever possible.

Even though eBird can be the perfect repository for this wealth of data, how can entering bird sightings actually help this horrible situation?

After the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, volunteers and professionals descended upon Alaska in huge numbers. Some volunteers may have gotten in the way here and there, but with all those eyes and cameras bearing witness to the devastation, there was no way that Exxon could hide the environmental damage and the toll on wildlife. The final tally for oiled birds was between 100,000 and 250,000 oiled seabirds and at least 247 Bald Eagles. Thanks to the huge public outcry, the issue of single-hulled tankers was kept alive, and a great deal of pressure was put on Congress to enact legislation to strengthen protections for our vital waterways.

After the BP spill in 2010, I was disillusioned to see how dramatically things had changed. Only a handful of volunteers and very few professionals went to the Gulf. Marge Gibson, past president of the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council and the woman who led the team recovering oiled Bald Eagles after the Exxon Valdez spill, was turned away from helping—literally prohibited from providing her valuable expertise—as were countless other specialists experienced in retrieving oiled pelicans and other birds along the Florida and California coasts. BP, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, conservation organizations, and the media gave out phone numbers for people to call if they wanted to help, and those of us who called were told we’d be notified if our services were necessary, but I know of no one who was ever called back. Qualified people with years of expertise in helping animals after oil spills waited for phone calls or email that never came. Marge Gibson waited for months with her bags packed.

http://blog.aba.org/2014/03/galveston-bay-oil-spill-what-we-birders-can-do.html

*And* there's a petition:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/count-all-documented-oiled-wildlife-rather-just-oiled-animals-are-physically-retrieved-after-spill/qNZbBPG4