The Gulf Oil Spill Disintegrated This Island
Transcript
Doug Meffert,
Executive Director Audubon Louisiana:
Cat Island was actually one of the four largest Rookeries in
Louisiana for Brown pelicans, snowy egrets, roseate spoonbills, least terns and
a variety of other shorebirds.
And now it’s just a fragile remnant of what it once was.
P. J. Hahn, Former
Coastal Zone Director, Plaquemines Parish Government:
In 2010, prior to the oil spill this was a pristine island
with 8-foot mangroves. It was roughly around 5.5- almost 6 acres. This was
ideal nesting ground for migratory birds in the wintertime looking for places
to nest for the spring.
The oil spill hit and these little islands were here to
greet the oil.
Natalie Peyronnin,
Director of Science Policy, Environmental Defense Fund:
The oil comes in;
it kills the mangroves, which then kills the root system. And the roots are
what’s holding together this island. Without that root system holding together
the sediment, it just erodes away.
In just five years we’ve seen this island almost disappear
and probably by the next anniversary this island will be gone.
P. J. Hahn, Former
Coastal Zone Director, Plaquemines Parish Government:
The U.S. Wildlife
and Fishery Studies show, that chicks when they’re born will imprint to these
islands. So every year they return to the same place they born to breed and
nest again.
The study also shows that when the birds come back here, if
the island is gone, they don’t go off and breed somewhere else, they just don’t
breed. So we’re losing generation after generation of birds.
Natalie Peyronnin,
Director of Science Policy, Environmental Defense Fund:
This is essentially
one of the longest running environmental disasters in the US.
Five years later, oil is still coming ashore her and will
continue to come ashore here as scientists have found immense tar balls and oil
still remaining at the bottom of the gulf. Ultimately what this means down the
road we don’t know.
We know when the oil spill hit, in the first 95 days, over
800,000 birds perished. What does that mean for the long-term stability of
those populations?
P. J. Hahn, Former
Coastal Zone Director, Plaquemines Parish Government:
We even had some
rare and endangered birds that were actually nesting out here and today,
nothing. They’re all gone.
Natalie Peyronnin,
Director of Science Policy, Environmental Defense Fund:
There is an effort
to restore this island and bring the sediment back and the mangroves back.
So if we don’t start doing restoration now in environments
that were oiled, the harder that’s going to be. It’s going to take more
resources, more money to build back what was there before the oil spill.
Doug Meffert,
Executive Director Audubon Louisiana:
Having this loss from sea level rise, from natural erosion
and to be exacerbated by the BP Oil Spill, to me it really is in a way the
canary in the coal mine for the habitats that are going to be threatened in the
next couple of decades.