Man seeks to restore what we destroyed  

Editorial
Saturday, March 18, 2006

IT was an ecological mystery. Over nearly three decades, sick or dead birds covered in oil washed up on the beaches of Point Reyes. There had not been a recent oil spill. The beaches were clean. So what was contaminating and killing the birds?  

Thickening the plot, the thick, black petroleum-smelling substance was neither refined gasoline nor traditional crude oil. And the oil-coated sick and dying birds only appeared in the winter. Through the years, an estimated 51,000 dead birds were washed up on shores from Bodega Bay to Monterey Bay.  

Finally, in 2002, state officials, acting as detectives, solved the mystery. They matched samples of the oil to the S.S. Jacob Luckenbach, a freighter that sank in the Gulf of the Farrallones after colliding with another vessel about 50 years earlier. The Luckenbach was loaded with more than  400,000 gallons of engine oil.  

During the winter, swells would disturb the oil and wash it through the flyways of the birds. Once the source of the mystery oil slicks was discovered, the Coast Guard removed the remaining oil, 100,000 gallons, from the wreck.

Since the oil was removed, naturalists at the Point Reyes oil wildlife treatment center report treating only a few dozen birds.  

In early March, the California Department of Fish and Game announced a $20 million plan to protect and renew the nesting grounds of the affected birds. It will be funded by the federal Oils Spill Liability Trust Fund, established by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 following the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill. We fully support the restoration plan and believe it is exactly the kind of activity Congress had in mind when it approved the oil pollution act.

More than 50 species of birds were harmed in the mystery spill. Common murres, rhinoceros auklets and western grebes were the most affected. Endangered species such as the western snowy plover, the brown pelican and the sea otter were also compromised.

The restoration plan includes several projects officials hope to begin next year. One will educate pilots and boaters so they will not disturb the locations where the common murres nest, including the rocky cliffs of the Farallon Islands and Devils Slide. Another will enhance the environs of the rhinoceros auklet on Ano Nuevo Island by restoring eroded top soil and planting native plants so the birds have enough dirt to burrow and lay eggs.  

Too often, the contamination that degrades our environment and kills wildlife is irreversible. In this case, the mystery of the recurring oil spills was solved and we have the opportunity to restore what had been destroyed.