Happy Bird Day

Tomorrow is International Migratory Bird Day.

"Seventy-five percent of all migratory birds in the US use the Gulf as a corridor"


(via treehugger)

A little over 2 weeks ago and just 52 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana (less than the distance from Toronto to Barrie ON, or St.John's to Cupids NL), the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, burned, then sank. It has been leaking almost 800,000 litres of crude daily since then. The site is located near Chandeleur Sound, host to the Breton National Wildlife Refuge and the Delta National Wildlife Refuge. This region is home to "more than 400 species including whales, egrets, herons, otters, American alligators, bottlenose dolphins and millions of migratory birds. This is also a critical location and time for nesting and spawning of many species, including bluefin tuna, sea turtles and brown pelicans." (via National Wildlife Foundation)

Short-term efforts come in the form of wildlife experts and volunteers. The real scale and long-term impact of this disaster will only be known by history, as was the case with the popular comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill. One week after the BP incident, speculations were that it may take months to clean this up, and potentially damaging methods are already being used out of desperation. There may be hope in some innovative science and lessons learned from the past.

At least Rush Limbaugh thinks theres no reason to panic.
"You do survive these things. I'm not advocating don't care about it hitting the shore or coast and whatever you can do to keep it out of there is fine and dandy, but the ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and was left out there. It's natural. It's as natural as the ocean water is."

But then again, he also thinks "hardcore environmentalist wackos" blew up the rig on purpose in protest of more drilling.
(via ABC)

(more images here)