eBirdseed.com Wild Bird Feeding Blog

At roughly 8:30 AM, November 7th, the 902 foot class "A" cargo carrier "Cosco Busan" traveling at apx. 11 knots hit the center tower of the California Bay Bridge, spilling some 58,000 gallons of "bunker fuel" into San Francisco Bay. (Bunker fuel is the thick, smelly byproduct of gasoline production.) From what I've been reading, at least 1,000 birds are already dead, and another thousand are undergoing rescuers' "best efforts"... As for how many thousands of birds and other wildlife will die due to this disaster... Who knows?

But I guess we all know what's involved regardless of the location...


Photo courtesy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council

On my last post, Rick commented that he was disappointed that I failed to mention this spill, and in retrospect, I think he was right. Hence this entry. But that leads to a "bigger" issue ... What do I write about and how much attention do I give to wildlife news items vs. backyard bird stuff?

• Do I report on the "Cosco Busan" spill? Should I dedicate an entire post to it as I did here?
• What about the very recent November 11th "Volganeft-139" spill in the Kerch Strait? (The California mishap loosed roughly 200 tons of oil, whereas the Kerch Strait disaster unleashed at least ten times that much oil and has already killed 30,000 birds.)
• And then there is the even more recent November 15th cyclone "Sidr" that pretty much flattened coastal Bangladesh, killing over 2,000 people, and bringing with it unimaginable damage to the local wildlife.

So here's the deal... Some disasters are so close to home here in the states that we (eBirdseed.com) cannot ignore them. The California wildfires were one such calamity; hurricane Katrina was another. These were not just ruinous to the wildlife but claimed human victims as well. (And as a reminder, it's still not too late to help the folks on the "left coast".) But the bottom line is that I need to hear from more people like Rick who will tell me what they want from this blog, local or otherwise.

To bring this full circle... What can we do to address the California "Cosco Busan" spill specifically, and how can we get the most "bang" for our donated buck? Hmmm... I used The American Institute of Philanthropy and Charity Navigator, and found that The Conservation Fund has great promise. They distribute funds to all 50 states, and they're certainly worth a phone call or an email to see if you can earmark a donation to a specific cause.

Better wrap this one up... Thanks again to Rick for bringing this to the foreground...

See you by the feeders,

Alan

References used for this post:

• Fisher: Birds return to sea; oil-spill survivors released after cleanup
• Path of the Cosco Busan Hitting the Bay Bridge
• Cosco Busan Spills 58,000 Gallons of Fuel Oil into Bay
• Seaflow Statement on the Cosco Busan Bunker Fuel Spill
• Time Passes for Effective Cleanup in Oil Spill
• Kerch Strait storm tragedy and oil spill
• Shipwrecks in Kerch Strait Spill Oil, Sulfur Into the Sea
• Cyclone Sidr