Exxon's Wildlife Legacy Lives On

We all have defining moments that change the way we see the world, the incidents that inspire us to take up one cause or another. For me, one of those moments was the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Even as a kid, I was haunted by images of birds, sea otters, and other animals slick and black with oil. It was a wake-up call for many about what human irresponsibility was doing to wildlife and the environment.

Two decades later, the Exxon Valdez is the gift that keeps on giving.

On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker hit the Bligh Reef off the Alaskan coast, dumping an estimated 11 million gallons of crude oil into the Prince William Sound. The spill desecrated about 1,300 miles of coastline and took the lives of more than 3,000 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 14 orcas, over a quarter of a million birds, countless fish, and a number of other species. Many of these animals suffered slow, painful deaths from ingesting the oil.

At the time of the spill, many scientists believed the oil would naturally break down within a few years. They were wrong.

It's estimated that as much as 16,000 gallons of crude oil remains in the Sound today, still being ingested by wildlife. The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, formed as part of the original settlement between the government and Exxon, reported in 2009 that ”…Exxon Valdez oil persists in the environment and, in places, is nearly as toxic as it was the first few weeks after the spill”.

In 2006, it was reported that more than 350 studies had failed to find any significant lingering impact on Prince William Sound's wildlife. That information came from a spokesman for ExxonMobil. In a more recent and less biased study, researchers from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia studied harlequin ducks. They  found that exposure to oil was "unequivocally higher" in the Valdez fallout area than in similar populations elsewhere. The researchers noted that the consequences of oil spills are measured in decades rather than years.

Despite the increased awareness that came out of the Exxon Valdez tragedy, oil spills continue to occur today. Just last week, a rig sank in the Gulf of Mexico and, over the weekend, it began spewing oil. The damage is at 42,000 gallons across a 600-mile area ... and counting. Thanks, in part, to lessons learned two decades ago, the response to oil spills is faster and more efficient than it was in the Valdez days, and the spill is likely to be contained and mostly kept away from coastlines. But the relatively small size of the spill doesn't mean much to the birds, fish, and marine mammals that will die in the Gulf of Mexico from exposure to the crude oil.

Just last month, Obama announced plans to expand offshore drilling. This latest oil spill is exactly what has environmentalists and wildlife conservationists worried. Tell President Obama to protect wildlife from irreparable damage by keeping our coasts closed to drilling.

As Animal Welfare Institute Research Assistant Serda Ozbenian says, "It took the deaths of over a million creatures for improvements to be mandated on the oil companies. Let them not have died in vain."

Photo Credit: jimbrickett