Wildlife Still Exposed To Exxon Valdez Oil 20 Years After Disaster
Taken during clean-up of Exxon Valdez spill. 700 miles of coast line was contaminated with crude oil. (Photo Jim Brickett. CC Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic)
Scientists in Alaska have discovered that lingering oil from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill is still being ingested by wildlife more than 20 years after the disaster. The research, published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, uses biomarkers to reveal long-term exposure to oil in harlequin ducks and demonstrates how the consequences of oil spills are measured in decades rather than years.
The Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground on the Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989, spilling 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into the sea, covering 1,300 square miles. It is still regarded as one of the most devastating human-caused contamination events, and the effects on wildlife populations and communities have been debated by biologists, ecologists, and the oil industry ever since.
Now, using the biomarker CYP1A, which is induced upon exposure to crude oil, an international team led by Daniel Esler, from the Centre for Wildlife Ecology, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, has measured prolonged exposure to oil in local wildlife populations. (more…)
Where the Wild Things Were: How Conservation Efforts Are Failing
In the essay, “Where the Wild Things Were,” currently appearing in Foreign Affairs, Dr. Steven Sanderson, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society, asserts the world’s political institutions have failed the planet but “realism cannot turn into defeatism.”
Sanderson, who published an essay with a similarly dire assertion in 2002, concludes these seven years later: “There have been landmark foreign policy acts in the past that managed to satisfy both domestic and global interests, and there could be again in the future.”
Sanderson sees as one road to progress policies that connect biodiversity and climate change.
Writes Sanderson: “In short, the time is ripe for a new vision, one that takes both biodiversity and climate change seriously and explores the crucial connections between them. The Copenhagen process is already moving in this direction, and some new global financial mechanisms are also emerging.”
The following are excerpts from this timely article being published on the eve of the U.N. Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, December 7-18. (more…)
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