U.S. Government Said Offshore Drilling Posed Little Risk for Wildlife

Working in government, every once in awhile, you get it right. And, sometimes, you get it wrong. And sometimes, you get it wrong on such an epic scale that it almost defies description.

It's that last one that keeps government decision-makers up at night, and someone (or multiple folks) at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ought to be having quite a few sleepless nights. You see, back in 2007, the USFWS said offshore drilling was really not that much of a risk to wildlife.

Just to review a little bit from your high school civics class, the USFWS is the agency charged with protecting wildlife, especially endangered species. Last time I checked, oil company CEOs were not an endangered species.

The agency in charge of protecting those CEOs, you could argue, is the Minerals Management Service, now known as the "Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement." (Yay for rebranding.) Their job, of course, is to keep that sweet, sweet black gold flowing. They're the ones who prepared the initial ecological impact study for BP's Deepwater Horizon project. Then, USFWS signed off on it.

According to the New York Times, USFWS "can ask for changes in the assessment if it believes it is inadequate, or it can insist on conducting its own survey of potential threats, something the agency has frequently done in the past."

The MMS survey, by the way, noted that a spill of 1,000 to 15,000 total barrels had a 27 percent risk of reaching critical habitat for endangered species. By way of comparison, the Deepwater Horizon spill is releasing an estimated 27,000 barrels per day. You do the math.

It's pretty clear that USFWS put those oil company CEOs ahead of less-profitable things like sea turtles and pelicans. The big question is, why?

Well, 2007 was arguably a different time, in terms of how far the U.S. government would go to accommodate Big Oil. Both the Minerals Management Service and the USFWS are part of the Department of the Interior. At that time, the Interior Secretary was a fellow named Dirk Kempthorne. Kempthorne, a former Idaho Senator and Governor, has raised a nice chunk of change in his political career from the oil and gas industry — over $20,000 in just the last year of his Senate tenure, for instance. And of course, the guy who hired Kempthorne, George W. Bush, had plenty of Big Oil connections himself.

It's not outside the pale to suggest that, from the top echelons on down, the word was out: petroleum is more important than pelicans.

So, what are the practical effects of USFWS giving the stamp of approval to offshore drilling? Well, at the time I'm writing this, the death toll is at 1,347 dead birds, 444 dead sea turtles, and 53 dead mammals, according to dailydeadbirds.com. By the time you click on that link, the numbers will probably be even higher. It also bears mentioning that we don't know, and never will know the actual "death toll." Some animals sink to the seafloor, others are apparently being burned alive, and don't forget the effects on the plankton that form the base of the marine food chain.

It would be nice to hope that with the Department of the Interior under new management, things have changed. (Although we have every reason in the world to be skeptical of even that.) Time, I suppose, will tell. But this is a good lesson in how little bureaucratic decisions sometimes have heart-rending repercussions.

Photo credit: IBRRC