What Defenders Is Doing about the Gulf Oil Disaster

Within 24 hours of the Deep Horizon rig blowout, key Defenders experts began responding to the disaster. Our efforts are focused in three critical areas:

Protecting Wildlife, Bearing Witness and Educating Policy Makers

Defenders staff and volunteers have been on the ground, in the air, and on the water in the Gulf gaining firsthand knowledge of this tragedy while lending our resources and expertise to the recovery efforts.

• Protecting wildlife harmed by the spill. Our chief scientist, Dr. Chris Haney, is coordinating the seabird surveys that are being carried out in the Gulf. Dr. Haney is working to establish a baseline of the condition of several species and document the damage to wildlife from the disaster.
  
  Having worked on the wildlife damage response to the Exxon Valdez disaster and being a recognized leader in seabird conservation, Dr. Haney is a natural choice to aid in the federal response to the disaster. He is also providing commentary and analysis about the effects of the spill on our blog.
  
  Defenders’ top priority is to get wildlife the assistance they need right now and ensure animals won’t be injured by future spills. Our Action Center provides several opportunities for wildlife supporters to weigh in with the Obama administration and Congress to demand a rapid response to the disaster. Tens of thousands of people have already spoken up in support of the animals!
• Meeting with senior government officials. Within two weeks of the blowout, Defenders of Wildlife Executive Vice President (and former Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) Jamie Clark visited several national wildlife refuges in the Gulf region. Jamie has since made a second visit to the Gulf to see and document the damage to wildlife and habitat, and consult with Interior Department officials. She brought with her Jeff Corwin, a Defenders board member and correspondent for science and the environment for NBC news and National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore.

• Read Jamie’s report on her visit with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge. >>

  Watch video of Jeff Corwin and Joel Sartore from the Gulf.

  
  
• Putting boots on the ground. In Florida, we have cosponsored several beach clean ups to prepare the Sunshine State’s beaches for the arrival of oil. At the most recent event, 90 volunteers removed 1,700 pounds of trash that could otherwise entangle or be ingested by wildlife. Trash that gets oiled becomes hazardous material not easily disposed. The Florida team has also visited a number of national wildlife refuges and participated in hazardous materials training channeling volunteers to training sessions, so that we can knowledgably inform others and take specialized, direct action when called upon to help wildlife.
  
  Defenders was also a primary sponsor of the June 26^th Hands Across the Sand event that united citizens, business owners and elected officials on beaches and across the United States to support clean energy and offshore drilling. 
• Educating the public and policy makers on the immediate and long-term impacts. We created the Gulf Oil Spill Response & Recovery website, which enables visitors to visually map oil spill impacts, enter recovery projects and observations, share photos and track the long-term impacts of the spill.
  
  The tool uses up-to-date geographic imagery and forecasts, focusing on known locations of wildlife nesting sites, species concentration areas and other environmentally sensitive resources. We’re also working to enlist the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other partners to contribute additional data to enhance the site and make it more accessible to citizens monitoring the impacts of the Gulf disaster. 
  
  We’ve also created the Defenders of Wildlife blog to quickly get the word out on key information coming out of the Gulf. Visitors can find the latest reports from our staff members on the ground, video accounts of the spill’s impact and an oiled wildlife ticker that is regularly updated with the current official counts of confirmed dead and impacted birds, sea turtles and marine mammals.
   
  Senior staff members have provided their scientific and policy expertise in frequent interviews with major media outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, USA Today, BBC News and Channel News Asia. Richard Charter, our senior policy advisor for marine programs, has been interviewed by hundreds of news outlets around the country and the world and is providing regular news roundups on the blog. 
  
  Finally, we’ve developed an ongoing series of fact sheets that detail the impacts of the Gulf oil disaster on key wildlife and habitats, including sea turtles, brown pelicans and other imperiled species and the places they need to survive.

Securing a Moratorium on Further Offshore Drilling

Soon after the explosion of the BP Deepwater Horizon, Defenders’ legal team began investigating the Minerals Management Service’s (MMS) approval and environmental review of BP’s Exploratory Plan (EP) for this operation.

• Taking MMS and BP to court. Based on our investigation, Defenders and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) filed suit in federal district court in Alabama against MMS, alleging that the agency had violated the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) by categorically excluding the Deepwater Horizon and dozens of other offshore drilling operations from any meaningful environmental review.
  
  Defenders and the SELC have also notified BP of our intent to sue the company for violations of the Endangered Species Act for their unlawful take of endangered species as the result of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. We are particularly concerned with not only the damage caused by the release of oil, but also the widespread application of chemical dispersants that can harm threatened and endangered sea turtles, whales, fish and seabirds.
• Fighting new offshore drilling.One of Defenders’ priorities was stopping the exploratory drilling operations that Shell Oil planned to begin July 1^st in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska’s north coast.
  
  We would especially like to thank the 118,000 supporters who took action by contacting their elected officials as part of our successful campaign to stop Shell’s drilling plans in this sensitive area. Defenders also participated in a multi-group national advertising campaign to raise awareness about the issue and encouraged congressional opposition to the Alaska drilling.
  
  Proof that our efforts paid off came on May 27^th, when President Obama announced a much needed reprieve for Arctic wildlife by postponing Shell’s drilling in the fragile Arctic waters for at least a year. He also cancelled lease sales scheduled off the coast of Virginia. In addition, the president implemented a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. All of these were hard-won advances and collectively represent a tremendous first step.

Promoting comprehensive climate change and energy legislation.

No matter how stringent our regulations or enforcement, drilling for oil and gas is—and always will be—an environmentally dirty and dangerous business. Defenders of Wildlife is dedicated to a future where Americans can wean ourselves off our oil addiction. 

• Fighting for the strongest possible bill to address climate change and clean energy. Climate change legislation announced by Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman in May 2010 may finally provide a basis for Senate action. However, that legislation currently still includes political sweeteners, aimed at Republican and Gulf and Alaska senators, that would promote new offshore drilling.
  
  Defenders responded to the announcement of the bill with a clear statement that we opposed new incentives for more oil and gas development and therefore could not support the legislation in its current form. We also made clear that we are eager to see enactment of climate change legislation this year and that we remain committed to working with senators to fix the bill’s fundamental flaws—a message we drove home with more than 80,000 messages from Defenders supporters urging their senators to oppose the drilling provisions in the climate bill.      

Where We Go From Here

Defenders’ dedicated staff is making an extraordinary effort to respond quickly, to effectively draw attention to wildlife and habitat impacted by the disaster, to repair the damage done to those irreplaceable natural resources, and to do all we can to make sure something similar never happens again.