On Mon, 29 Jul 1996, Dennis Paulson wrote:

> Tweets,
>
> Brian Sharp is not one of us, so if you have a response to his article on
> oil-spill rehab efforts, please send a copy to him too.

Thanks, but I am subscribed to Tweeters for a while so responses are
getting to me.

I take this opportunity to make one more point on the multimillion dollar
cost of oiled bird rescue. In the case of Exxon Valdez spill in 1989,
Exxon settled out of court for $1.1 billion in damages and fines.
However, it is not generally known that Exxon also got a sizeable
credit for both its oiled beach cleanup effort (remember those pictures of
squadrons of men in rubber boots hosing down of the shorelines with hot
water and swabbing rocks with absorbent towels?) (that effort cost the
company between 1 and 2 billion dollars), and the oiled
bird pick-up and "rehabilitation" effort, which cost the
company another $40 million. We know that the shoreline cleanup effort
was cosmetic, done for public relations, to save the company's image.
One case in point: I was involved with a study of black oystercatchers
(in press, American Fisheries Society, Proceedings of the Exxon Valdez
Symposium, due out this month) which showed that oystercatcher chicks
disappeared (died) at the rate of 6% per
day on oiled shorelines, compared to 0% on non-oiled shorelines. Those
supposedly "cleaned" shorelines were clearly nothing of the sort.

Similarly with the oiled bird rescue and rehabilitation effort.
According to the available band recovery data, the oiled bird
rescue was as ineffective as the shoreline cleanup effort. 375,000 birds
were killed (ibid) (75-80% of these were common murres),
about 30,000 birds were found dead, and 1600 live birds were rescued. Of
the live birds, 800 died in captivity and 800 were released. Of the birds
released half were sick with aspergillosis contracted in captivity. The
banding data show that only about 10% of the released birds survive a
year, so at most about 80 birds, and because of the
aspergillosis perhaps only 40, might have survived a year.

That's 40 birds of 375,000 killed, at a cost of $40 million.

Some further information. The Judge in the Exxon case rejected an
early $1.1 billion out-of-court settlement as too low, considering the
enormous environmental damages. However, Exxon was able to persuade the
judge that its penalty should be reduced by the amounts it spent
trying to ameliorate the damage, and received credits for both the
oiled shoreline cleanup and oiled bird rescue, both of which
were relatively ineffective and very costly. Had it not been for these 2
credits, the amount Exxon would have had to pay would have been $2
billion, perhaps, or more.

In future spills, oil companies will continue to try to claim these kinds
of credits for doing ineffective, costly cleanup efforts. And some
rehabilitators will support the oil company's claim, because they in turn
have been led to believe that they are doing something worthwhile for the
birds themselves. In effect, they are thus supporting and working for the
oil companies. Sometimes, they actually receive payment or financial
support in the form of sizeable grants, from the oil companies, or
support from the states from moneys the states receive from the oil
companies--the bigger rehab outfits certainly have a financial stake,
which amounts to a conflict of interest. Some rehabbers say that doing
something is better than doing nothing, even despite the data on the very
low survival of cleaned and treated birds. But doing something expensive and
useless is worse than doing nothing, because there are even further costs
associated with that, like a billion dollars in penalties foregone.


Brian Sharp
2234 NE 9th Av
Portland, Or 97212
503-287-6501
ecopers at teleport.COM