Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Defenders’ vice president of Communications Cindy Hoffman introduces “Heroes in the Gulf, ” a series dedicated to the the men and women who are working tirelessly to mitigate the devastating effects of oil on the Gulf coast and its wildlife. Join Defenders as we hear stories from people from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Louisiana Fish and Game and more working at ground zero of the Gulf oil disaster.

Posted by Krista Schlyer, a photographer for Enviro-pic.org and member of the International League of Conservation Photographers.

Yesterday was bookended with images of a Gulf icon, the brown pelican, in gruesomely contrasting circumstances. I arrived yesterday with Jamie Rappaport Clark, executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife and Cindy Hoffman, the organization’s vice president for Communications. This is our second trip as a trio to the Gulf to assess and document firsthand the extent of the impact of the oil spill and the effectiveness of the response. We started out the day driving to Houma, Louisiana, the nexus of the response in this state, which has come to be known as the incident command center.

On the drive there, Cindy noticed the Louisiana license plate in front of us. “They have a brown pelican on their license plates,” she’d said. The image of the pelican on the license is a good one, capturing the comic but regal appearance of the bird. They look like their genetic code is missing a few key elements, but the grace with which they glide just inches above the surface of the ocean clarifies things: they are perfect, and perfectly adapted into the natural world in which they evolved. Read the full story

It’s day 49 of the Gulf oil catastrophe and I am back on the ground, this time in southern Louisiana with Cindy Hoffman and Krista Schlyer to see for myself the true impact on wildlife.

We hit the road early this morning and headed to the BP incident command headquarters to meet with Rowan Gould, the acting director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Kind of odd (and a bit disconcerting) to go into the belly of the beast, but once we were there, I was glad we entered.  Lots of activity, a lot of intensity and even more security. After some negotiating by Rowan, we were able to get into the back rooms where all the action was happening. Before he negotiated with Mike Ulster, the head of the efforts for BP in Louisiana, the BP security would not even let us look in the windows of the rooms. Read the full story