Spill Hits Largest Pelican Colony

By John Vlahakis

Pelicans are one of the most exotic birds to watch. On land they look like a sage, carefully contemplating life and their next move. In flight they are one of the most graceful aerialists. “A wonderful bird is the pelican. His bill can hold more than his belican. He can take in his beak Food enough for a week; But I’m damned if I see how the helican”, Dixon Lanier Merritt (1872-1972). Pelicans do capture our attention in flight and on land, and especially when we watch them dive bomb the oceans for fish. Regrettably, they are becoming one of the casualties of the BP spill in the Gulf. The largest pelican nesting area in Louisiana has been hard hit from the spill. Researchers from Cornell University Ornithology Lab have underscored the U.S Fish and Wildlife tallies of birds impacted by the spill on Raccoon Island in Louisiana. Government tallies showed 68 birds in this habitat impacted by oil, while the Cornell group showed 400 birds oiled and hundreds of terns in this area being affected. The group also spotted dead birds, but did not provide a tally. Birds that show blotches of oil, and are not covered in oil, are also at risk of dying. A small amount of oil can kill a bird because it hampers their ability to regulate their body temperature. The Raccoon Island pelican colony was established by the state of Louisiana in the 1980’s. It’s been a very successful brown pelican restoration effort, efforts that brought brown pelicans off of the endangered species list last year. The island is home to over 10,000 birds. U.S Fish and Wildlife will not enter the islands nesting areas to save the pelicans that have been oiled. Doing so would disrupt other birds and their nests, and could do more harm than good to the rest of the colony. According to USF&W, across the Gulf, roughly 3,000 killed or oil covered birds have been collected by wildlife agencies since the oil spill began.