MLast week at a Deepwater Horizon response press conference, Federal On-Scene Coordinator Adm. Paul Zukunft told National Public Radio’s Debbie Elliott, “We did have you know certainly a loss of wildlife, but in comparison we had about 2300 dead oil birds and Exxon Valdez, that number was nearly 225,000. So again, the impact could have been much worse than what it was.”
But it is too early to know what the impact of the Deepwater Horizon spill has been, or will be, on bird populations. We do know that the count of carcasses, and the number of live, oiled birds that are rehabilitated, does not begin to enumerate the impact of the spill on populations. It does not reveal the actual death toll, nor the cost to birds in terms of their long-term ability to survive and reproduce.
The complexities are numerous and lead to confusion when bird numbers are reported publicly.
Comparing the count of dead birds that were collected with oil visible on their feathers from the Deepwater Horizon spill to the estimated toll from the Exxon Valdez oil spill is like comparing, well, apples to zebras.
The 2,263 birds collected dead with visible oil on their bodies is an actual count done, as all actual counts are done, imperfectly.
The 225,000 from the Exxon Valdez is an estimate, calculated with a complex algorithm incorporating the death toll, numbers of oiled, live birds, and models and other estimates to create an educated, scientific guess about how many birds died....more
in AudubonMagazine.org
10/28/2010
