Audubon Testifies Before Congress on Second Anniversary of Gulf Oil Spill

Melanie Driscoll, Director of Bird Conservation, Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi Flyway

Kim Hubbard/Audubon magazine

Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–April 20, 2012. Yesterday at noon, I spoke before Congressional and Senate staffers and members of environmental organizations on Capitol Hill. Hosted by Senator Bill Nelson’s office and the Commerce Committee, the event was a briefing set up by the nonprofit Oceana to discuss, with scientists and technical experts, the status of Gulf recovery and offshore drilling regulatory reform.

Others speakers included Julia Hathaway, program director for the National Wildlife Federation’s Mississippi River Delta Restoration Campaign, and Michael Craig, energy analyst for Oceana’s Climate and Energy Campaign.

Below is my testimony:

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.—Chief Seattle

At this second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, which killed 11 people and spewed oil in to the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days, I come to you as a scientist to speak to the ongoing plight of the birds and habitats of the Gulf of Mexico. I also come as a child of the Chesapeake Bay, another of America’s great estuaries, and a citizen of the Gulf Coast. Through the long days of the acute disaster, my heart ached for the Laughing Gulls, birds from the beaches of my youth, the Brown Pelicans from my childhood rhymes, soaked in oil and dispersant, struggling to survive. I appreciate this opportunity to speak to you today.