Gulf Coast Birds Need Your Help

A Message from the Cornell Lab’s Conservation Science Director, Ken Rosenberg

Dear friend,

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has affected everyone who cares about birds and nature.
We appreciate the many calls and messages we have received from people expressing concern and the desire to help. In this update, I’ll share what our team is seeing along Louisiana’s coast--and explain the enormous need for monitoring and recovery. You can help by reporting your sightings to eBird or by donating now to support our conservation work.

Let’s Make Sure That Birds Surviving the Oil Today Will Have a Future Tomorrow
The image of the pelican in oil at left was taken by Ben Clock, a member of our video crew documenting the oil’s effects on wildlife. (If you can’t see the image, click here for the web version.) Our crew alerted rescuers who captured the pelican for rehabilitation.
Sadly, this pelican is just the most visible indicator of an entire ecosystem under siege. As committed groups work to save the lives of individual birds along the Louisiana coast, the Cornell Lab is focused on mobilizing birders and providing key scientific data and expertise to ensure that bird populations get the help they need to recover--now and into the future.

Birders Aid Recovery by Reporting Their Sightings
In the face of large-scale disaster, one of the first keys to recovery is the ability to quickly assess damage and prioritize efforts. The Cornell Lab and Audubon have mobilized birders in all the Gulf Coast states to report their sightings to eBird. Since May 4, volunteers have submitted more than 175,000 observations--key data that can be compared with past years to understand the oil’s impact on birds and pinpoint locations for immediate and long-term recovery. Please contribute your sightings to www.ebird.org.

Cornell Lab’s High-Tech Monitoring: A Critical Need for Ocean’s Wildlife
Unlike birds, which thousands of people monitor every day, no baseline data exist to help scientists assess the oil’s impact on the Gulf’s largest animals--whales. This week, the Cornell Lab’s bioacoustics team is deploying autonomous underwater recorders in the Gulf to record the sounds of sperm whales, Bryde’s whales, other marine mammals, and fish. These data will provide key information about how marine life is responding in areas affected and unaffected by oil--the first step in taking action to help.

Making Sure the Birds Are Heard
The Cornell Lab team is documenting the oil spill’s effect on birds for the public, scientists, and policy makers. Our video crew recorded the scene at Grand Terre on June 5, after oil got past booms, and at Barataria Bay on June 8 as oil seeped into the marshes. They have found 14 species with oiled plumage, including egrets, spoonbills, stilts, terns, gulls, and sanderlings. None were as heavily oiled as the pelican shown earlier in this message, but even smaller amounts of oil can be life-threatening since clean feathers are essential for insulation, waterproofing, and flight.

The Oil is Still Flowing, But Recovery Must Begin Now. Please Help.
The success of recovery from the oil spill depends on our nation’s ability to anticipate and assess the damage, prioritize clean-up efforts, and implement long-term recovery. Gathering information about the effect of oil on animals is crucial to each of these steps. Please join us in making a positive difference by reporting your sightings to eBird or by making a donation to support our work. Thank you for your help.

Sincerely,
Kenneth V. Rosenberg
Director, Conservation Science

Your support of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology helps us solve critical problems facing birds and other wildlife by using the best science and technology--and by inspiring people of all ages and backgrounds to care about and protect the planet.