State of the Future report: Humans are doing OK, but nature suffers as a result – and we’ll pay for it

The future's bright – but only if we rise to the challenges which threaten environmental catastrophe, a major new report warns this week.

Future generations are destined to be healthier, wealthier, better educated, and are set to live longer lives, but it will be at an untold cost to the environment unless action is taken to prevent it.

"The global situation for humanity continues to improve in general, but at the expense of the environment," says the authoritative State of the Future report. "We are winning more than we are losing – but where we are losing is very serious.... It is clear that humanity has the ideas and resources to address its global challenges, but it has not yet shown the leadership, policies, and management on the scale necessary to guarantee a better future."

Continued

BP oil spill: The environmental impact one year on

In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 people and resulted in 4.9m barrels of oil being discharged, threatening marine life and hundreds of miles of coastline. Yet, one year on, what environmental impact did one of world's largest accidental oil spills have on the region's wildlife and habitats, and has it been as bad as it was feared at the time?

By Mark Kinver Science and environment reporter, BBC News

Scientists have warned that it is too soon to attempt to offer a considered assessment on what impact the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest of its kind, has had on the Gulf of Mexico's wildlife.

Scientists have warned that it is too soon to attempt to offer a considered assessment on what impact the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest of its kind, has had on the Gulf of Mexico's wildlife.

In short, they said, nature did not work in such a way that the full picture will present itself within just one year.

Also, they added, more data needed to be gathered in the months and years ahead to gauge the full extent of the incident, which covered such a vast area.

Dr Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) - one of the federal agencies leading the clean-up operation - said there were reasons to be optimistic.

In an interview with the AP news agency, she said that the health of the Gulf is "much better than people feared", but the jury was out about what the end result would be.

"It's premature to conclude that things are good. There are surprises coming up - we're finding dead baby dolphins," she observed.

Researchers and conservation groups said it was difficult to access information being gathered as part of an investigation by a federal Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process.

The NRDA is a formal framework in which government agencies look at the damage caused by the spill to natural resources and services - such as fisheries, wetlands, protected species, agricultural land - and calculate how much it would cost to repair the "injuries".

"What we know is very sketchy," said Claude Gascon, chief science officer for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

"We have tried, and many others have tried, and it is almost impossible to get any idea what that group of agencies and researchers are actually finding.

"The simple reason for that is that there is going to be so much potential litigation in terms of settlements etc, " Dr Gascon told BBC News.

"So it is very difficult to know at the moment, the scale of the impact has been and will be in the future.

"All of us, including conservation organisations, professionals and academics, are keenly awaiting whatever the federal process will release into the public domain."

There was also agreement that it was too soon for long-term impacts to manifest themselves, such as disruptions to ecosystems' food chains.

This is why it was important for the data collection currently being carried out by the NRDA to continue, even if there was an out-of-court settlement, said Stan Senner, director of conservation science for Ocean Conservancy.

"It is too soon to draw any conclusions about impacts, especially within the marine environment," he told BBC News. "We certainly cannot gauge long-term effects just 12 months after the spill.

"For example, there were things like the massive use of dispersants, which was unprecedented. And because the well was so far offshore (50 miles), there were undoubtedly many, many impacts that were out of sight and we may never have the capacity to work out what really happened.

"Right now, there are far more questions than answers."

Understanding risks

Referring to the NRDA, Dr Senner said: "If the process runs its full course, it could take several years, may be more, to go through the damage assessment studies, then develop a restoration plan and present a claim for the cost of restoration to the responsible parties."

"All of us, including conservation organisations, professionals and academics, are keenly awaiting whatever the federal process will release into the public domain."

There was also agreement that it was too soon for long-term impacts to manifest themselves, such as disruptions to ecosystems' food chains.

This is why it was important for the data collection currently being carried out by the NRDA to continue, even if there was an out-of-court settlement, said Stan Senner, director of conservation science for Ocean Conservancy.

"It is too soon to draw any conclusions about impacts, especially within the marine environment," he told BBC News. "We certainly cannot gauge long-term effects just 12 months after the spill.

"For example, there were things like the massive use of dispersants, which was unprecedented. And because the well was so far offshore (50 miles), there were undoubtedly many, many impacts that were out of sight and we may never have the capacity to work out what really happened.

"Right now, there are far more questions than answers."

Understanding risks

Referring to the NRDA, Dr Senner said: "If the process runs its full course, it could take several years, may be more, to go through the damage assessment studies, then develop a restoration plan and present a claim for the cost of restoration to the responsible parties."

See more at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13123036
(Via Dawn Holloway)

150 turtles trapped in single net, die (Olive Ridleys) (Via HerpDigest)

150 turtles trapped in single net, die (Olive Ridleys)

By DC Correspondent, Deccan Chronicle, 4/10/11

In one of the worst disasters, around 150 Olive Ridley turtles got trapped in a single net and found dead on Kothapeta beach under Vajrapukotturu mandal in Srikakulam district on Friday.

The village sarpanch, Mr Ambati Raju, said he never saw so many dead turtles in his life and blamed the fishermen from Visakhapatnam for not taking preventive measures. He defended that the local fishermen never used such nets in which the turtles get trapped and dead.

The founder chairman of Visakha society for prevention and care of animals, Mr Pradeep Nath, said the disaster took place as the mechanised boats and trawlers did not using turtle excluding devices.

More Sea Turtles Died Following Gulf Oil Spill Than Any Similar Period In Past Two Decades

MATT SEDENSKY
01/26/11 05:36 PM

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — More sea turtles were killed or injured in the Gulf of Mexico in the months following the BP oil spill than in any similar period during the past two decades, a report released Wednesday found.

While the report suggested many of the 600 turtles were hurt by the spill, it's still not clear exactly how many died from ingesting the crude or how many drowned in fishing nets in the scramble to catch shrimp and fish before the oil ruined them. The sea turtles could have also been killed by cold weather or other factors unrelated to the spill.

The report said the rate of dead, disabled and diseased sea turtles discovered in the months following the massive April 20 spill was four to six times above average. The analysis – by the National Wildlife Federation, the Sea Turtle Conservancy and the Florida Wildlife Federation – was conservative and only took into account turtles found on shore, not those rescued or recovered at sea.

Researchers with the federal government said it would take years to determine the full impact of the spill on sea turtles. Necropsies have been done on more than half of 600 turtle carcasses, and while some may have died from oil, most of the turtles drowned in fishing gear, said Monica Allen, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association spokeswoman.

Unseasonably cold temperatures last winter were also detrimental to sea turtles, most of which are considered endangered, said Gary Appelson, policy coordinator for the Sea Turtle Conservancy.

"Sea turtles have had a tough year," Appelson said.

Doug Inkley, senior scientist at the National Wildlife Federation and a co-author of the report, said while some of the turtles' deaths could not be linked to the spill, the much higher-than-usual number indicated the disaster was at least partially responsible.

He said turtles suffered more than other species because their populations are already low and face long odds of reaching adulthood. It takes turtles 10 to 30 years to reach maturity, meaning it could take decades to restore the damage to their population, Inkley said.

"Of all the species affected by the oil spill, those for which I have the greatest concern are the sea turtles," he said.

Wildlife officials undertook Herculean efforts to try to save turtles during the oil spill. All told, hundreds of loggerhead nests containing nearly 15,000 hatchlings were successfully transported and later released along the Atlantic.

Besides urging lawmakers to uphold funding for beach conservation, the report's authors urged the elimination of subsidies for construction projects along coastlines and the protection of less developed areas of the shore.

More than 90 percent of North American sea turtle nesting happens on Florida's beaches. Five of the planet's seven species of sea turtles are found in the state. Four of those – green, hawksbill, leatherback and Kemp's ridley – are considered endangered, or at risk of becoming extinct.

The fourth, loggerheads, is listed as threatened, or likely to become endangered.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/28/gulf-oil-spill-turtles-di_n_814732.html

Louisiana oyster beds remain empty after BP disaster

By Paul Adams

BBC News, Louisiana

Louisiana's oyster beds have not recovered from the US's worst environmental catastrophe, the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig disaster, and some fishermen fear they never will.

We were fishing at the end of the world- or at least a place that felt like it.

Grand Isle is one of the final precarious fragments of land where the myriad bayous of the Mississippi delta give way to the open water of the Gulf of Mexico.

Around us, hungry frigate birds watched as we headed for the oyster beds.

Pelicans swooped by in formation, low and effortless, and a pair of dolphins raced just ahead of the bow, daring each other to get closer and occasionally rolling sideways to check we were suitably impressed.


We were less than 100 miles (160 km) from the wreck of the Deepwater Horizon but everything looked pristine under a blazing sun.

And the oysters! As big as the palm of my hand, succulent and briny.

It was still early and so, for the first time in my life, I had oysters for breakfast. But the atmosphere aboard the boat was sombre.

The oysters were good but hardly plentiful. At this, the season of peak demand, far too many were simply dead.

Not, as you might think, coated in sticky oil or even poisoned by chemical dispersants but killed off, as luck would have it, by fresh water.


Millions of gallons from the Mississippi River were hurriedly diverted into the bays and marshes of the delta to keep the oil from rolling in, earlier in the year - but this upset the delicate balance of fresh and salty conditions the oysters need to survive.

Nick Collins is a fourth generation oyster-man, with a rich gumbo of an accent to match.

His business had only just recovered from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, five years ago, and Nick was looking forward to a bumper year.

But if the first setback was an act of God, the second was an act of industry - an industry that is much bigger and more commercially important to Louisiana than Nick's delicious oysters, an industry that sits off this fragile, mysterious landscape of channels and marshes, and produces the stuff that Americans really cannot get enough off.

Microbe army
At nearby Port Fouchon beach, the shallow-water rigs, tens of them, sit as little as a mile offshore.

Oil arrived here in the weeks after the spill and BP's clean-up continues.


Armies of contract workers, mostly from Central America, make their steady, painstaking way along the sand.

Wave after wave of them, in bright yellow boots, stooping slightly over shovels and brushes, scooping up tiny tar balls, covered in sand.

They pause, scour the patch in front of them and then - to the sound of "Vamonos!" ("Let's go!") - move on a few paces.

Not all the oil is from the Macondo well. Studies show that some of it comes from elsewhere, perhaps from the rigs we can see, perhaps even from the natural seepage that goes on all the time in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico - and which has, over the eons, created an army of microbes that like nothing more than to feast, like Pac-Men, on energy-rich hydrocarbons.

Organisms that just might clean up whatever muck lurks out of sight, all by themselves.


So the clean-up is not just about the Deepwater Horizon but about every company that has ever sought to make a fortune extracting the black stuff and bringing it ashore.

BP, it seems, is making amends for all of us.

Fading hopes
But back to the oysters and another family business struggling with the fallout.

On the edge of New Orleans' legendary French quarter, the P & J Oyster Company has been in business for more than 130 years.

Like Nick Collins, Al Sunseri wonders if he has what it takes to recover.

The ice which gushes noisily into his giant coolers every eight minutes has very little to cool and the high, whitewashed-stone shucking tables are deserted.

He has laid off all but two temporary workers who keep a trickle of customers happy with oysters from nearby Texas.


Al also had to deal with Katrina, downsizing and waiting for the oyster beds to replenish themselves.

He was confident, as everyone was, that it was just a matter of time before the oysters reappeared and everyone was happy again.

But now he wonders about his son, who has experienced depression and has not been working for a couple of months.

He says he remembers his own anxiety as a young man, taking over a business with such a long tradition to uphold.

He thinks about Alaska and the herrings that disappeared from Prince William Sound three years after the Exxon Valdez spill, never to return.

More than seven months after the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon, the full ramifications of this disaster are still hard to gauge.

The uncertainty gnaws at everyone who depends on the sea. Is it possible, they wonder, that the worst days may still lie ahead?


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9254859.stm