Syracuse, NY - Melanie Driscoll, a 2001 graduate of SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, went to work for the National Audubon Society in Louisiana just a few months after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005. Today, as director of bird conservation for the society’s Louisiana Coastal Initiative, she’s helping to organize volunteers to combat another...
Melanie Driscoll, a 2001 SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry graduate, is the National Audubon Society's organizer of volunteers helping to rescue oil-soaked birds from the Gulf Coast. Driscoll spoke to The Post-Standard about the long-term effects of the millions of gallons of spilled oil, those oil-soaked birds we’re seeing on television, and the over-eagerness of some of the 22,000 people who have volunteered to help.
Q: Can you describe the environmental damage down there? What does it look like?
A: People picture that there would be waves of oil that would wash up to habitat and there would be oil everywhere. That’s not what we’re seeing. Some areas look very bad visually and others look fairly clean. There’s oil on some sides of islands and not the other sides. It’s very strange pattern. We were on a boat the other day and you can see fingers of oil, these strings that might be a mile or more long, and not very wide, and they’re floating through the water.
Q: You came to Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. How does the environmental damage compare from a hurricane to this?
A: It’s too early to tell. The one-day impact is low compared to a hurricane but the overall impact is just unpredictable right now. In Hurricane Katrina you had approximately 50 years of land loss in one day. For this, we will have to continue flying the coast we’ll have to be doing surveys for potentially years to come to know how much habitat has been damaged.
Q: We’re seeing a lot of images of birds covered in oil and people cleaning them. Is Audubon involved in that as well?
A: We’re doing the bird washing, which is being done by vets and expert wildlife rehabilitators. I’ve been out to see some of those efforts. I’ve handled a lot of bird washings, and an oil-stressed bird is different than a lot of other animal handling.
Q: In what way?
A: If you picture a pelican, they’re very big birds, very strong with a long bill with a hook on the end. Oiled birds are slippery and they’re stressed and they may try to bite. The birds are under several different types of stress. They could be suffering toxicity from ingested oil. They’re overheated or very cold. They could have severe sunburn if they’re oiled and out in the sun.
Q: The brown-billed pelicans were just removed from the endangered species list last year. How will the spill affect their status?
A: We don’t know if it will affect their status or not. It depends on what areas the oil spreads over and what proportion of the brown pelican population might be affected and how badly are they affected. Some of those things we can learn immediately and some of them will take longer to ascertain.
Q: How many people have signed up to volunteer?
A: The last number I heard for the Audubon database was over 22,000 people.
Q: I’ve read that there’s almost an overabundance of volunteers
A: Right. We’re trying to get people understand that running down to help is not helpful. There have only been 700 or so birds brought in alive to the oil wildlife center. Across the number of days of the spill that’s only about 10 birds a day. There are people with skilled labor helping with the bird rescue.
Q: Are people just kind of showing up? Is that a problem?
A: Yes it can be a problem. I’ve found people wandering around on docks wide- eyed, frantically looking for something to do. I’ve had people call and say, ‘I’ll come, I’m the perfect volunteer. I’ll sleep on the floor.’ I’ve had to answer that there is no floor for you to sleep on. We’ve had people show up with carloads of Dawn dish washing liquid. You can get overwhelmed by help and be unable to function. If you have too much Dawn to unload and store, there is less space for birds.
Q: Is there any end in sight to this.
A: Did they cap the well and I didn’t hear about it? If not, there’s not really an end in sight. In the short term, obviously, the well needs to be capped. The oil can’t be completely cleaned up until it stops flowing from the bottom of the gulf. In the long term we need to know what the impact on populations are. We will need to monitor birds for years to come and find out what do they need to recover fully.
Contact Glenn Coin at gcoin@syracuse.com or 470-3251.