The effect of the oil spill on Louisiana's State Bird, the brown pelican

The April explosion on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig and subsequent oil leak that followed has caused some major damage to the coast and wildlife of Louisiana, which is a nesting ground for our State Bird, the brown pelican. With the beaches and marshes now invaded by globs of oil, the pelicans, now in the middle of their nesting season, are doomed.

Pictures are shown on local television stations daily of rescue missions of brown pelicans, other sea birds, turtles, and dolphins which have washed ashore covered in oil either covered in oil or dead. It is very sad to see those poor birds with feathers soaked in oil, or worse dead. The oil coating weighs the birds down to where many can't fly or hunt for food and they just lie there until their last breath.

Rescue stations have been set up in several different locations along the Louisiana Gulf shoreline, as well as in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The most active rescue station so far is in Louisiana is at Fort Jackson.

Fort Jackson has seen the most oiled birds brought in. To date they have received 470 live birds at the rescue station and approximately 400 dead birds. Other rescue stations in Louisiana have only collected about 30 live birds.

At this time we can only hope that the brown pelican population won't be wiped out by this oil spill. The brown pelicans were just removed from the Endangered Species List last November. The progress made toward that effort has now been wiped out by millions of gallons of oil invading the Gulf of Mexico.