Anderson Cooper can always be relied on to cover the animal impact during disasters. His show last night, Tuesday May 25, included a report in which we saw pelicans nesting, surrounded by and covered in oil. You can watch it on line at http://tinyurl.com/323o8dj
Unfortunately Cooper also did an interview about the issue with SeaWorld board member Jack Hanna. Hanna regularly shares misinformation on talk shows -- I think now of his appearance on Larry King Live after Barbaro's death. Hanna told viewers that horses are so well cared for that few race horses have to be euthanized, when in fact an Associated Press article tells us that 704 horses died racing in the US and Canada the year immediately before Barbaro's accident. And I won't even start to comment on Hanna's recent appearances representing SeaWorld in the week after the Orca Tilikum killed his trainer (Tilikum's third kill) lest my blood start to boil.
On Anderson Cooper last night Hanna told us, "The only good thing that can come out of this" is that it happened near the Audubon Institute and the AZA and "you can go right down the coast there with SeaWorld and all these folks who have been familiar with all these oil spills. So if it had to happen anywhere, thank God these folks are there on standby."
Ah yes, thank God SeaWorld is nearby. Then Anderson Cooper asked if the oil coated pelicans can be saved and Hanna answered, "Yes, they can be saved. They can be washed with Dove -- I think it's the Dove -- I'm not sure what soap they're using. But yes, we've proven that before in the Valdez oil spill, where the zoo worked hard up there, as well as, of course, SeaWorld."
While Sea World to the rescue is a nice story that a Sea World board member might enjoy sharing, an article from Spiegel international carries the sad heading, "Gulf of Mexico Spill, Expert Recommends Killing Oil-Soaked Birds." You'll find the article on line at http://tinyurl.com/36cv3a7
(My thanks go to Alexandra Paul for sharing it with us.)
No, the expert isn't callous. Silvia Gaus, a German biologist at the Wattenmeer National Park, has 20 years of experience and she worked on the environmental cleanup of the Pallas -- a wood-carrying cargo ship that spilled 90 tons of oil in the North Sea. She says:
"According to serious studies, the middle-term survival rate of oil-soaked birds is under 1 percent."
The article shares:
"Catching and cleaning oil-soaked birds oftentimes leads to fatal amounts of stress for the animals, Gaus says. Furthermore, forcing the birds to ingest coal solutions -- or Pepto Bismol, as animal-rescue workers are doing along the Gulf Coast -- in an attempt to prevent the poisonous effects of the oil is ineffective, Gaus says. The birds will eventually perish anyway from kidney and liver damage."
Gaus explains that is a long slow death, so she recommends euthanizating the birds quickly and painlessly, or just leaving them alone, oil soaked, in which case they will starve with less long term pain than they will endure if they are cleaned enough to attempt to get on with their lives -- plus they will be saved the terror of the capture, cleaning and force feeding. The article tells us that the World Wildlife Fund reluctantly agrees, a spokesperson saying, "Birds, those that have been covered in oil and can still be caught, can no longer be helped. … Therefore, the World Wildlife Fund is very reluctant to recommend cleaning."
The article ends with:
"The Prestige spill killed 250,000 birds. Of the thousands that were cleaned, most died within a few days, and only 600 lived and were able to be released into the wild. According to a British study of the spill, the median lifespan of a bird that was cleaned and released was only seven days."
In other words, Jack Hanna was apparently, as usual, talking about something he knew nothing about. While Hanna's message was more uplifting, the public needs to know the sad truth, and hopefully the truth will bring the outrage that inspires action.
Please thank Anderson Cooper for covering the wildlife issue, but ask him to leave the commentary to the wildlife clean-up experts, not to SeaWorld spokesperson Jack Hanna who gives us misinformation.
Anderson Cooper 360 takes comments at:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form5.html?10
A Washington Post article on the wildlife effect is just heartbreaking. It tells us of dozens of turtles and dolphins washed up dead, as well as hundreds of birds so far. We read a description of a black-bellied plover, a skinny-legged shorebird, with oil on her face. We are told the bird had no way to clean the oil, unable to use her beak on her face, and was plunging her face repeatedly into a shallow depression of water, to no avail of course. You'll find that article on line at: http://tinyurl.com/34z5ttg
Why not send a letter to the editor at the Washington Post, read by our country's legislators, demanding clean energy for the sake of the Earth and the animals? The paper takes letters at letters@washpost.com
Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor.
Two more links: If you missed my DawnWatch alert from two weeks back, which gave links to Fox News, Democracy Now and Washington Post coverage of our government's exemption of BP from an environmental impact study regarding drilling in the Gulf, please check it out at: http://tinyurl.com/2e62hta
Most importantly, that alert has a link to a petition asking President Obama to reverse his plans for more offshore drilling. Please sign that petition.
And finally, we all need a laugh don't we? Here's a terrific take off on BP public relations ads:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8NIrw2l9x8
Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts only if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line.)
Please go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com to learn about Karen Dawn's book, "Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals," which was chosen last year by the Washington Post as one of the "Best Books of The Year!"
To discontinue DawnWatch alerts go to http://www.DawnWatch.com/nothanks.php
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Date: Wed May 26 19:07:06 2010
