Survival chances for oil spill-treated birds unclear

NEW ORLEANS — They have become some of the most iconic images of the Gulf oil spill: birds coated in crude, struggling to move. “They’re heart-wrenching. I mean the photos I’ve seen of birds, Brown Pelicans, terns, are heart-wrenching,” said Darron Collins, a managing director for the World Wildlife Fund. Collins is tracking the effects of the spill on wildlife across the Gulf Coast. He said he is especially concerned that some birds appear more vulnerable to the oil. “My worry would be about species like the brown pelican that have only recently been removed from the endangered species list,” he said. There is now an ongoing effort to collect and clean oiled birds. At a rehab facility in Fort Jackson, birds are brought in, cleaned and have their blood drawn, to see whether or not the oil is affecting their organs. “Then they go through a rest period to make sure we know they got their strength up,” said Doug Zimmer, with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Deepwater Horizon Response Unified Command. “Meanwhile, their blood is analyzed.” Yet, some have questioned whether all the effort worth it. In published reports, German biologist Silvia Gaus has said that the rescued birds have less than a 1 percent chance of survival once they are released back into the wild. She also said it would be more humane to euthanize them. The US Fish and Wildlife Service, though, disagrees. “Most of the data that this German biologist is relying on, comes out of North Sea spills …