A Hollow Success Story?

It would take a very conscious effort these days to avoid bumping into coverage of the calamitous oil spill endangering wide swaths of the Gulf of Mexico and, potentially, beyond. Throughout the internet, television, radio, newspapers, magazines and soon books, the mainstream media, alternate media and bloggers galore are honing in on this human-created environmental disaster. I've certainly written on this topic before and you can be guaranteed that it will be the subject of many of my posts in the future!

One of the aspects of the unfolding catastrophe that tugs on a lot of heart strings concerns the photos of wildlife drenched in the oily muck. These creatures, who are doing nothing more than going about their routine lives, are becoming prisoners of this environmental chaos. In a recent article on CNN, the spotlight was shown on a wildlife rehab center that is working to save brown pelicans.

The sign out front points the way: birds, please enter to the right; humans, enter on the left.

Huddled in a pen and covered in brown streaks of oil, a dozen pelicans await treatment after exposure to the pools of crude on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

Increasing numbers of birds are arriving at the Fort Jackson Oiled Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in this coastal Louisiana town as the environmental disaster in the Gulf stretches on. At least 50 birds were treated on Tuesday alone.

Wildlife workers say the birds get oiled when diving for fish. Their efforts at preening sometimes worsen the coating of crude on their feathers.

The lucky ones are found by state workers and volunteers in time to save their lives.

"The animals that are coming in are covered in oil," the center's Rebecca Dunne says. "But they are pretty healthy animals. So that makes us feel like like we have a chance to save them. We have been pretty successful so far."

While around 200 birds have been dead on arrival at the center, so far none of the 400 birds brought in alive have died.

Yes, this might represent a "feel good" storyline, but the sad fact of the matter is that no one really knows if all these efforts ultimately will save these individual birds. As soon as they are cleaned up and released, they will return to the same environment! It's not hard to imagine at all that a recently cleansed bird could be just as befouled before the next sundown.

Don't get me wrong. As an avid animal lover, I applaud the efforts of such volunteers. I think that it's imperative for our species to reach out to others to try to help mitigate the effects of the oil spill. At the same time, we must understand that the problem is going to grow far worse before it gets better. As long as their habitat is in peril, every moment represents the possibility of being adversely affected.

Who knows? Some of the pelicans cleaned next week may be the very same birds cleaned this week.