Dennis Anderson: Don't forget migratory birds

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., will meet Friday morning in the Twin Cities with a variety of migratory waterfowl and other experts to discuss the potential threat of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on birds that will leave Minnesota beginning in August to winter in the South.

The gathering, which will be attended by representatives of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Ducks Unlimited, will be a welcome public airing of challenges Minnesota breeding birds could face this fall.

"What I've taken from discussions I've had recently in Washington is that there has not been enough focus on the potential effects of the oil spill on migratory birds," Klobuchar said Thursday in a telephone interview from Washington. "The focus so far has been on fishing in the Gulf and the economics of the way of life along the Gulf."

Noting that about 13 million ducks and geese winter on the Gulf Coast, Klobuchar added, "We have to also start thinking about the effects of the spill long-term on wildlife in general from around the country."

The Senate has many powerful members who are from states where ducks and geese are common, and where waterfowl hunting is a long-held tradition, Klobuchar said.

"Ensuring that funding is secured from BP to recover any losses to these is a priority," she said.

To date, state and federal agencies, including the Fish and Wildlife Service, have for the most part discussed the threat posed by the oil spill only among themselves -- except when asked.

Klobuchar, a member of the Senate Environment Committee, will be joined Friday also by leaders of the Twin Cities Raptor Center, as well as representatives of the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources non-game program, and Minnesota Audubon.

Considering that the administration of President Obama has been criticized for what some view as a delayed and ineffective response to the spill, the Fish and Wildlife Service, one would have thought, already would have very publicly aired its concerns about the coming fall migration, and discussed possible mitigations.

That hasn't happened.

Fortunately, Ducks Unlimited has been more proactive. Thursday, DU announced it has received $2.5 million from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to restore and enhance as many as 20,000 acres on lands adjacent to or near Gulf Coast wetlands.

DU said the money will be used to flood alternative habitats in the rice regions of coastal Louisiana and Texas, in an attempt to attract birds that otherwise might fly to oil-contaminated areas of the Gulf.

Work in the Gulf region will begin immediately. The money comes from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's "Recovered Oil Fund for Wildlife" -- part of BP's portion of net revenue from oil recovered from the Deepwater Horizon drill site.

The fund is intended to safeguard wildlife at risk due to the spill.

Well-known is that problems along the Gulf Coast of disappearing fisheries and wildlife habitats due to coastal erosion have been decades in the making, and $2.5 million -- while welcome-- won't begin to address the greater environmental disaster that was present before the spill, and will be there long afterward.

Solutions -- not just plans -- have been difficult to come by.

That's because, in large part, long-standing resource-consuming policies of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Agriculture Department continue unabated.

Each has been replaced -- as has been the case here in the north -- by croplands, much of them subsidized by taxpayers.

Klobuchar and others in Congress would do well also to require that the Fish and Wildlife Service explore coordination with the USDA of a possible release from federal program requirements that now bind rice farmers in the South.

That way, the rice crop divergence of ducks and other birds that DU will attempt could perhaps be expanded.

A dumb idea? Maybe.

But dumber still is to have no plan-- or plans formulated only behind closed doors -- in the face of a threat whose proportions can now only be imagined.