FORT JACKSON, La. (AP) - Inside a warehouse-turned-refugee
encampment for animals soaked with oil, rescue teams wash acrid goo
from the matted feathers of brown pelicans and other seabirds and
try to nurse them to health.
Wildlife rescue organizations have carried out this mercy
mission after many oil spills in recent decades, hoping to save as
many creatures as possible. Of all the efforts by all the workers
and volunteers responding now to the nation's worst offshore spill,
the attempts to cleanse these animals and set them free tug hardest
on the heartstrings.
Even if the results are up for debate.
Critics call bird-washing a wasteful exercise in feel-good
futility that simply buys doomed creatures a bit more time. They
say the money and man-hours would be better spent restoring
wildlife habitat or saving endangered species.
In the seven weeks since oil began erupting from a mile-deep
well after a drilling rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, more
than 150 pelicans, gulls, sandwich terns and other birds have been
treated at a rehabilitation center 70 miles south of New Orleans.
A total of 442 birds in the Gulf region have been collected
alive with visible oil; 109 oiled birds have been found dead. More
are on the way, as oil slicks assault beaches and marshes that
serve as breeding areas for many species.
The victims are scrubbed clean and held a week or more to
recover. Then a Coast Guard plane flies them to Tampa Bay in
Florida for release - far enough away, workers hope, that the birds
won't return to oiled waters and get soaked again. Birds treated
from this disaster have been tagged, and none has been spotted in
oil again.
It's all part of a broader animal care initiative overseen by
federal agencies and operated largely by nonprofit groups, with
funding from BP PLC. Other centers focus on turtles and marine
mammals.
"All of us here taking care of the wildlife feel it's
important," said Rhonda Murgatroyd of Wildlife Response Services
in Houma, La. "We can't just leave them there - somebody has to
take care of them."
A noble sentiment, said Ron Kendall, director of the Institute
of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech University. But the
hard reality is that many, if not most, oiled creatures probably
won't live long after being cleansed and freed, he said.
"Once they've gone through that much stress, particularly with
all the human handling and confinement, it's very difficult,"
Kendall said. "Some species might tolerate it better than others,
but when you compare the benefits to the costs ... I am
skeptical."
The arm of the federal government that nominally oversees
offshore rigs agrees with Kendall, and has for some time.
"Studies are indicating that rescue and cleaning of oiled birds
makes no effective contribution to conservation, except conceivably
for species with a small world population," the U.S. Minerals
Management Service said in a 2002 environmental analysis of
proposed Gulf oil drilling projects. "A growing number of studies
indicate that current rehabilitation techniques are not effective
in returning healthy birds to the wild."
Fewer than 10 percent of brown pelicans that were cleaned and
marked for tracing after a 1990 spill in Southern California were
accounted for two years later, while more than half the pelicans in
a control group could be found, three scientists with the
University of California, Davis, reported in a paper published in
1996. The formerly oiled birds also showed no signs of breeding.
Dan Anderson, a professor emeritus of conservation biology at
the University of California at Davis who led the study, said last
week he still questions how well the rescue missions succeed but
doesn't oppose them.
"If nothing else, we're morally obligated to save birds that
seem to be saveable," Anderson said.
Besides, bird rehabilitation groups have improved their methods
the past couple of decades, he said.
A 2002 study by Humboldt State University scientists found that
gulls treated after a California spill survived just as well as
gulls that were not oiled. Rescue supporters also point to data
showing high survival rates for penguins receiving care from a
South African foundation that has handled more than 50,000 oiled
seabirds since 1968.
Rescue missions can convey a false impression that damage from
oil spills can be fixed, said Jim Estes, an ecologist at the
University of California, Santa Cruz, who worked on the federal
effort to save animals after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.
"Oil may be doing a species considerable harm, but
rehabilitation won't change that," Estes said. "It will just help
a relatively small number of individuals from suffering and
dying."
At the Fort Jackson warehouse, where shivering pelicans huddled
inside pens awaiting their turn to be cleansed, such criticisms are
shrugged off.
"What do you want us to do? Let them die?" said Jay Holcomb,
executive director of the International Bird Rescue Research
Center, who has aided oiled animals for 40 years.
Most birds arrive at rescue centers hungry, dehydrated and
exhausted, having neglected eating in the frantic struggle to clean
themselves. Once a bird is strong enough, two workers cover it in
warm vegetable oil to remove the sticky oil, then apply dish soap
and scrub parts of its head with a toothbrush.
It's time-consuming and expensive. Cleaning a single pelican can
require 300 gallons of water. After the Exxon Valdez, some studies
estimated that $15,000 had been spent for each marine bird treated,
a figure others said was exaggerated. Scientists with the Marine
Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Center in California said it
costs them $600 to $750 to clean a bird.
James Harris, a senior wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service helping care for birds sullied by the current
spill, said critics also forget that many rescued animals will
produce offspring - especially brown pelicans, which were taken off
the federal endangered list only last year.
"It may be one pelican to me," he said, "but it could
represent a couple dozen pelicans to my children and could be in
the tens of hundreds for my grandchildren."

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