The oil has stopped, but the Gulf disaster is still unfolding for people and nature.
The report by Environmental Defense Fund, National Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation, "Common Ground:
A Shared Vision for Restoring the Mississippi River Delta," outlines the necessary steps to restore and rebuild an ecosystem that has lost more than 2,300 square miles of wetlands—an area larger than the state of Delaware—since the 1930s.
"The loss of coastal wetlands to oil contamination may speed up today's alarming land loss, leaving an already weakened ecosystem even more vulnerable to storms and other man-made assaults," says the report.
"Without restoration, every disaster will sow the seeds of a more devastating disaster down the line, and the region will continue on a path to eventual destruction.
These actions will make the entire area more resilient, protecting the people who live there, the industries critical to our national economy, and the wildlife that call the area home."
..."To meet the challenges of this battered ecosystem and to manage the challenges of responding to the oil spill, the federal government must work urgently in concert with Louisiana's Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration to revive these restoration efforts," the report concludes. "A new federal management structure must drive progress on a vision and plan projects in the short-term.
With oil continuing to come ashore, the coastal ecosystem does not have the luxury of time: action that gives a new structure to the federal agency effort must be taken immediately."....
