Birds Out of Flight Suffering from Oil Damage

Brief Introduction
July 6, 2010: Day 76 of the British Petroleum (BP) Oil Spill: On April 20, 2010, the biggest oil spill in United States history occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. It is called the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. This article describes just some of the jeopardy that this is putting ocean wildlife in. As of July 6, 2010, British Petroleum (BP) has spent $3.12 billion on cleanup efforts and attempting to cap the oil spill and has allotted $20 billion in funds for paying claims. Oil has a huge detrimental effect on wildlife, habitat, and, specifically for the purposes of this article, birds.

How Oil Impacts Wildlife and Wildlife Habitat
The methods in which oil causes injury and detriment to wildlife include: physical contact, absorption, inhalation, and ingestion. Something as seemingly simple as plankton contamination moves up the food chain because toxins never really disappear - they just get eaten. The fish eating the contaminated plankton also become contaminated. The birds and other natural predators of the fish - whether it be larger fish, or even whales then ingest those poisons. When they die, perhaps of ingestion of the oil, the oil has not disappeared, it simply dissipates back into the ocean to poison something else.

Birds of Flight and How Their Flights Have Been Delayed
You know how impatient you are when your flight has been delayed at the airport. Brown pelicans, if exposed to oil, can lose their ability to fly, float, or dive, ultimately leading to drowning. When birds are soaked or covered with crude oil, it interferes with how their feathers repel water and can lead to them freezing to death. The birds can also suffer organ damage from ingesting oil from cleaning their feathers. The ocean's birds are not merely decorations whose only purpose is to enjoy themselves, but they are here to keep the ocean in balance. When we humans throw the ocean's delicate ecosystem out of balance with oil contamination, we are tampering with many mechanisms, not just the water, but all the lives that depend upon it, and not just human ones.

Sources

1. "Effects of Oil on Wildlife and Habitat." U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

2. "What Does BP Stand for in the BP Oil Spill?"

3. "Day 76: The Latest on the Oil Spill."