Oil Spill Wildlife Spotlight: Roseate Spoonbill
 Photo courtesy of NASA |
Perched atop mangrove branches, fuchsia colored birds with gray-green spatulate bills softly quack. These roseate spoonbills, the only pink wading bird on North America’s southern coasts, were nearly wiped out in the 1800s, victims of plume hunters. They’re still listed as species of special concern in Florida and Louisiana, where the oil spill now threatens to wash into their habitat.
“One can never forget the first observance of these birds, or indeed any subsequent sight of them for they are always something of a red-letter experience in field study. Glowing with unbelievable color against the cobalt background of a Gulf sky, or framed amid the intense greenery of mangroves, huisache or ebony, the spoonbill etches itself upon one’s memory in an unforgettable picture of almost fantastic beauty,” wrote Alexander Sprunt, Jr. in the September-October 1943 issue of Audubon.
The species has a similar effect on Jerry Lorenz, the director of research for Audubon of Florida. “I see them all the time and I still say, ‘Oh my God that’s a gorgeous bird,’” he says.
Their nesting habitat, mangroves, is particularly vulnerable to oil. The plants have a specialized root system that extends above the water’s surface and allows them to thrive in salt water. If oil coats the surface, it can kill the trees and ruin the spoonbills’ breeding grounds.
Fatal effects of oil might also become apparent in the carmine-tinted birds’ food—mostly small fish less than two inches long—leaving the spoonbills with little to eat. The birds feed in shallow water, sweeping their bills from one side to another and snapping their bills shut when they feel a fish or aquatic invertebrate. If oil laps into the areas where they search for food, the waders could ingest the crude or become coated in its toxic sheen.
Oil pouring out of the sea floor is just beginning to show up in parts of Florida, home to approximately 30 percent of the spoonbill population. “At this point the concern is the same for every facet of the wildlife in Florida. We don’t know where the oil spill is going to go. It terrifies me. It could go anywhere, whether it hits a beach or a mangrove or a marsh,” says Lorenz. The spoonbills are a good indicator of overall ecosystem health, so Lorenz, fellow researchers, and citizen scientists are conducting pre-spill surveys in order to better determine the oil’s effects if it laps into spoonbill territory.
“Doing the surveys themselves is terribly important to monitoring the various ecosystems around the country. Even if the oil doesn’t strike, there’s merit in doing these surveys,” he says.
BP & LAWMAKERS DESERVE
BP & LAWMAKERS DESERVE CRIMINAL CHARGES AND OWE UNCAPPED AND LIMITLESS PAYBACK. UK needs to stop covering too … perhaps pay as well.
WHAT SHOULD YOU GET FOR IMPACTS ON YOUR HEALTH?
BP RUINS WORLD’S ENVIRONMENT AND AND DOES AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE TO REMEDIATE, DELAYING AS MUCH AS POSSBLE.
BP OIL perpetrated an environmental holocaust by unleashing destruction from their oil spill that will to all bodies of water, land, animals, vegetation, air and precipitation coming down.
This wll cause illness to all body systems of humans and nonhumans for this generation and all to come, and causing infertility, stillbirths, etc..
Can BP fence in the ocean? And cleanup chemicals add more toxic and cancer causing agents.
Greedy criminals do not deserve any earnings they ever made and should pay everything back ... no cap no time limit.
Instead they spend for PR whitewashing, meet oil companies like role model EXON cooking up ways to defraud and rip off victims (the world) more, buying up keywords in Google so everything points to BP.com and their lieng message of how BP is helping.
Who are the lawmakers and politicians that created or supported weak regs that allowed BP to save money while skimping on protections of life, who benefited from BP profits in US and Canadian waters unlike other places in world BP drills. These culprits should face criminal charges and be held monetary responsible too.
Of course UK wants “no name calling” … this must actually mean “don’t tell it like it is.” What is this, repeat of the revolution when people were not allowed to be different … and certainly not allowed to speak their minds. And your naming BP as “great” that simply is not the case. Quite the opposite considering their illegal behaviors, negligence, greed, and disprespect for life.