| Sept Board Meeting Tue Sep 14 @06:30PM - First Liberty National Bank, Dayton Financial Center, 109 East U. S. 90, Dayton, TX |
| National Public Lands Day Event Sat Sep 25 @09:00AM - 11:00AM Hwy 105 Trinity River Bridge |
| Big Sit Event Sun Oct 10 @07:00AM - Champion Lake Pier |
| National Wildlife Refuge Week - Butterfly Count Sat Oct 16 @09:00AM - Valero Gas station at intersection of Hwy 105 and Hwy 321 in Tarkington |
| Butterfly Garden Weed and Mulch Day Sat Nov 06 @09:00AM - 12:00PM Champion Lake |
| Nov Board Meeting Tue Nov 09 @06:30PM - First Liberty National Bank, Dayton Financial Center, 109 East U. S. 90, Dayton, TX |
Trinity River Refuge personnel working on BP spill effort
Friday, 27 August 2010 14:42 | 
Working the Spill
8-27-2010
I am a wildlife biologist with the Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge in Liberty County, TX. Part of my job is to protect the nation's wildlands and wildlife, wherever they may be. I was deployed to Dennis Pass, Louisiana, where the Mississippi meets the Gulf of Mexico, to capture live oiled birds, recover dead birds, and to scour the beaches for new deposits of oil. These were my thoughts, as I assisted with the Mississippi Canyon 252 oil spill in late July 2010 during a two-week detail.
I will never forget seeing a clean beach teeming with terns and gulls my first few days only to return the third day and see it splattered with oil, the raindrop-sized spots of oil still floating in, a precursor to tarballs. The worst I saw were areas 5 ft by 4ft wide, covered with the orange-brown sludge material, which if stirred with a stick, had the consistency and stickiness of a melted chocolate bar.
I did not see the initial impacts of the oil, like what was shown on TV. I did not see thick blankets of it floating in puddles, but more of it soaked in the ground, lurking, awaiting for sand to cover it, like it never happened. If we found new oil on the ground, we reported it to the U.S. Coast Guard. They would send in teams to clean the beaches. This entailed clean-up crew members using shovels to scoop up the layers of oil deposited and buried by days of waves and wind-blown sand. The clean-up crews also had to remove all vegetation and debris from the beach, this included all the trash, sticks, fish, crabs that floated up, for it was all covered in oil. If the clean-up crews found dead or sick/injured birds, regardless of degree of oiling, they reported them to us for pick-up.
Every biologist couldn't help but be a birddog. We all wanted to capture live birds. We raced to retrieve the bird, by boat, then by all-terrain vehicle, to the spot where a member of the Coast Guard awaited us. But within the short time it took for us to get there, the bird had died. The member explained how the bird was alive, being tossed around by the waves, and then spit on shore while he called us. He said it fumbled around, fell on its side, and regurgitated something thick and brown. Upon inspection, the laughing gull had a brown liquid in and around its mouth. Though the bird did not exhibit any oil on its body, it is still quite possible that the bird had died from ingesting oil. Other evidence of birds ingesting oil had been found on the beaches, it was found mixed in the bird feces. And, if birds were not ingesting the oil directly, it was still quite possible that it was coming in through the food chain. Fish and crabs were dead on the shores, it was in the vegetation, and it was in the water they drank.
Looks like the work is not over. I've been detailed to work around the same area for another two weeks starting the end of August.
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