Five years after the Gulf spill: What about the birds?
A new report from the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) offers some positive news on efforts to restore and protect some of the many wild bird species harmed by the April 20, 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. The birds were impacted not only by the oil, but by the cleanup efforts. In some cases, clean-up crews using heavy earth-moving machinery destroyed thousands of nests and caused significant disturbance.
The Gulf-wide, multi-partner campaign “continues to gain momentum and deliver important successes,” according to the report.
“2014 was by far our best year in terms of delivering bigger conservation results for beach-nesting birds,” said the ABC. We worked at 58 sites with 21 partners providing some combination of protection, monitoring, and outreach on more than 2,400 acres of coastal habitat that supported 950 nests and 1,400 breeding pairs of our target species: primarily Least Terns and Wilson’s and Snowy Plovers,” said Kacy Ray, ABC’s Gulf Conservation Program Manager.
Across the Gulf, the conservation program, which began in 2011, reached thousands of people through on-the-ground stewardship and community engagement. In 2014, more than 50 volunteers put in more than 1,000 hours educating the public about beach-nesting birds. Nest site stewardship led to outstanding results in St. Pete Beach, FL; Gulf Shores, AL; and East Beach, TX, where Black Skimmers and Snowy Plovers produced one fledging chick per breeding pair, which Ray describes as a remarkable reproductive output.
The effort includes partners from multiple conservation groups as well as local, state, and federal agencies implementing conservation activities to help impacted coastal birds recover. The project has brought expertise not only from ABC, but from partners throughout the Gulf region, including the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program; US Fish and Wildlife Service; Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program; Houston Audubon; Audubon Louisiana; Grand Isle State Park; Gulf State Park; Eckerd College in Pinellas County, FL; and the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory, among many others. The project, which is primarily funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, has focused on beach-nesting bird habitat in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida.