Speaking of Pelicans

Before the EPA and the Endangered Species Act, the brown pelican went extinct down here on Galveston Island, along with other bay creatures, due to pesticide use and harbor activity. This is not a unique story, and not a particularly old one. And yet the Bush Administration has singularly set about dismantling and obstructing the agencies put in place to preserve our natural environment. I was trying to find some information on the brown pelican’s demise and recovery here, but the first thing I found was an interesting current local story I hadn’t heard yet.

March 28, 2008:

Port of Galveston officials may never know who buried an entire railroad tank car filled with thousands of gallons of liquid, including a degraded form of the pesticide DDT. But they’re leaning toward the storage tank theory.

[...]

Initial samples taken by the port’s environmental consultants detected DDE, a breakdown product of DDT. The federal government banned DDT in the 1970s. It was blamed for devastating wildlife, particularly birds, and probably causes cancer in humans. Tests also detected the pesticide Endosulfan, a neurotoxin. Ingestion of even small amounts of Endosulfan has been linked to seizures and death.

[...]

The Port of Galveston, once controlled by private interests, became an (sic) public enterprise in 1940. There is no institutional memory of anyone burying the car since that time, said Bernie Curran, director of administration at the port.

  Galveston Daily News

I would think that any public enterprise would have had to keep records, and done so, unless they didn’t want anyone to know they were burying the tank. And then, why would you bury a tank in the first place unless it had something in it that you knew you would have to dispose of, presumably at a fair cost if it were indeed banned chemicals? And that would lead me to suspect it was done after 1970. (Is it the only one?)

The article speculates that the tank might have been buried by a private enterprise before 1940 for use as an underground storage tank. I think that’s very doubtful. The discovery of the tank car was only made when crews were installing a storm drain. A private enterprise using large amounts of pesticides wouldn’t completely bury a tanker to store them, would they? Not very handy to get to when you need it. It was never registered with the State as a storage tank. And, by the way, the State says it’s not going to investigate.

But, back to the brown pelican in Galveston. The following comes from an article by Gary Clark.

Four years before the ban on DDT, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries together with the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission started reintroducing brown pelicans to Louisiana. With the DDT ban, nesting success of the pelicans increased, and by 1979, nearly a thousand birds fledged on North Island in Louisiana’s Barataria Bay.

In 1990, brown pelicans---probably coming from Louisiana---returned to Galveston Bay.

My wife recalls that I jumped up and down like a little boy when I spotted a brown pelican in Galveston in the summer of 1990. And well I might have acted like a kid, because I hadn’t seen the bird anywhere near Galveston in 30 years!

Brown pelicans began nesting on Little Pelican Island in Galveston Bay in 1994. By 2001, their numbers in the bay had increased to 2,200 breeding pairs.

The Houston Audubon Society played a large role in the recovery of brown pelicans by managing the islands in Galveston Bay where the birds nest. Due to successful recovery of brown pelicans, the National Audubon Society recommended removing the birds from the endangered species lists of Texas and Louisiana.

  Nature Photographers

I can’t imagine Galveston without brown pelicans. That would be just too sad. So let’s get this administration out of Washington and far, far away from any power, and send packing those Republican congresstools who do its bidding. Not just for Galveston’s pelicans (and me), because that’s not the only thing they threaten, but for the sake of the whole world.