BP disputes wildlife reports, trashes media tour of site

BP came out swinging at the National Wildlife Federation for its report on Gulf species allegedly damaged by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and has taken strong issue with an environmental tour last week that the group sponsored in Barataria Bay.

A Tri-Parish Times reporter and a photographer were among the media representatives who traveled on the tour, which included stops at a pelican rookery and damaged barrier islands denuded of mangroves.

“The only thing this marsh tour illustrates is how little interest some advocacy groups have in telling the truth about the state of the Gulf’s recovery,” said Jason Ryan, a BP spokesman.

“These groups have chosen to focus on a few miles of marsh area rather than the more than 150 miles of Louisiana marshes that show signs of recovery, or the nearly 2,700 miles that either were not oiled or were lightly oiled in 2010 and show no issues due to efforts taken to protect the marshes, such as booming.”

Numerous scientific studies by both federal agencies and the state of Louisiana marsh experts indicate that, in most cases, marshes recover best on their own, the BP statement says, adding that the studies have shown “invasive treatment often poses a greater environmental risk than allowing the marsh to recover naturally. As a result, these isolated locations are being allowed to recover naturally.”

The U.S. Coast Guard has declared “removal actions deemed complete” for all but six of the 4,379 shoreline miles that were originally in the area of response. Under the Coast Guard’s direction, cleanup strategies were determined based on the net environmental benefit they provided, the BP response states.

“Under the Coast Guard’s direction, the extensive four-year shoreline assessment and cleanup effort was comprehensive, systematic and guided by science,” Ryan’s statement reads. “BP has spent more than $14 billion and 70 million personnel hours on response and cleanup activities, and significant progress has been made. However, even after active cleanup ends, BP remains committed and prepared to address residual oil if the Coast Guard identifies potential Macondo material and directs BP to respond.”

In a separate statement, the petroleum giant had this to say about the National Wildlife Federation report. “The National Wildlife Federation is an advocacy organization; it is not a Natural Resource Damage Assessment trustee and is not party to the NRDA studies undertaken to determine potential injury to natural resources that resulted from the Deepwater Horizon accident.”

The unattributed BP statement brands the report “a piece of political advocacy – not science” that “cherry picks reports to support the organization’s agenda, often ignoring caveats in those reports or mischaracterizing their findings.”

Among the aspects BP took issue with was information on dolphins.

BP noted that a federal investigation regarding a spike in dolphin deaths is ongoing and that “a number of potential causes are being investigated, and no definitive cause has yet been identified for the increase in strandings in the northern Gulf that began months before the accident.”

“The report also conveniently overlooks information available from other independent scientific reports showing that the Gulf is undergoing a strong recovery,” the BP statement reads. “Just this week, a study published by Auburn University researchers found no evidence that the spill impacted young Red Snapper populations on reefs off the Alabama coast.”