Part I: An Interview with LSU Ornithologist Dr. James Van Remsen About the Gulf Oil Disaster

LSU has always been a major center for American Ornithology, and has captured the imagination of the birding community with color and intrigue. We often associate LSU with tales of discovery and hardship in remote South American mountains where LSU researchers have worked endlessly to decipher the natural history and taxonomic relationships of birds and bird communities in the exotic lands of the tropics. Dr. James Van Remsen currently carries this ornithological torch. In this interview, Drew Wheelan and Dr. James Van Remsen, professor at LSU's department of Biological Sciences and Curator of Birds in the Museum of Natural Sciences talk candidly about the BP oil disaster and its effects on birds in the Gulf, and LSU's role in studying the catastrophe.

Drew: How long have you been at LSU?

Dr. Remsen: 32 years. I think this is my 33^rd I don’t know if this is my 32^nd or 33^rd I lose track

Drew: You’ve been here for 32 years, you’ve obviously seen some smaller oil spills, has LSU ever taken any sort of lead role in research or monitoring birds before?

Dr. Remsen: Not to my knowledge. Not Birds. There are a lot of people that have research programs that have studied the effects of contaminates on ecoysystems, including oil on salt marsh systems, but not directly with birds. LSU is pretty well positioned here to study this. There’s a big group of people here that study marine organisms from phytoplankton to birds.

Drew: Historically you haven’t done anything with birds here, related to spills?

Dr. Remsen: Well, we haven’t really ever had anything like this happen before. You know, there’s always a little bit. The studies have been from some well that leaks in the marsh, but there hasn’t ever been anything like this, anything that would have made somebody's news before, to my knowledge.

Drew: Your programs have always been geared toward the tropics. Seeing this kind of spill in your backyard, does this make you want to change focus at all, and change the direction of study more toward a local focus?

Dr. Remsen: Well, for me there’s no chance that I would redirect my studies. It’s just not what I like to do. I do what I like to do, it’s one of the reasons why I am an academic. That kind of research would be considered applied research, not basic research, and it’s really the perview of our renewable resources people, they’re the ones that would study something like that from a research point of view, not us. We have a specimen based research program that’s based largely in South America, and to some degree Indonesia, well the East Indies and Borneo, so this is a huge leap. Now, the only reason that we are involved is that Steve Cardiff, Donna Dittman and myself are working on a book of the birds of Louisiana, and we’ve been working on this project for a long time. So this has become the center of Louisiana bird records and Louisiana Ornithology, so even though our primary research is not in Louisiana, on the other hand, as ornithologists we’re probably more involved in the State’s ornithological scene than ornithologists in most other states. We’ve got strong ties to the Louisana Birding community. We’ve got the LA Bird Resource Center, and so on, but that’s more of a secondary, what do you call, a community interaction dimension of our program than a research interaction per say.

When I think of research, it’s thinking of questions and answering questions. It’s why. It’s detective work, and the stuff I do in LA, I mean there’s always detective work on what is the real status of species XYand Z and all that kind of thing, but I think it’s more in terms of compliation of information and provoking others to find out the details, so oil and gulf coast is brand new for us. Steve and Donna, they’re the ones that are doing all of the field work, and they’ve had a long term interest in Gulf Coast and Louisiana Shorebirds and Pelagics and that sort of thing.

Drew: I know Donna Dittman was in communication early on about developing some sort of pelagic bird monitoring program associated with the spill, but it really seems like wildlife managers that have been involved in the response haven't really tapped into the local pool of experts available to them here

Dr. Remsen: I don’t really blame them. I mean, if you were to google Gulf Coast Bird Research, you wouldn’t find our names. We haven’t published papers on Gulf Coast shorebirds and pelagics, or anything like that, so it’s sort of here say, word of mouth sort of thing, so I don’t blame them at all.

Drew: I guess I’m thinking in terms of EJ Raynor, having studied all of the Barrier Island Tern colonies, and people like that. I would just think that maybe there would be some communication with these scientists.

Dr. Remsen: Well, there’s also a student in Wildlife and Fisheries program named Cecilia Leumes, and EJ Raynor worked for her, at least I think he did. She studies the colonies on Isles Deneirs, and I haven’t heard anything of or about her during this whole thing.

Drew: Before this, would she have had a field season out there?

Dr. Remsen: I think she may be done with her field work, but I’m not sure. She’s a student of Frank Rower’s, and wildlife and fisheries, but even in that program, there’s no one working on Gulf Coast Birds. I guess the sort of sad thing is that in Louisiana, or elsewhere, there’s nobody doing any studies of Gulf Coast breeding bird populations, which are huge. I mean, this is a fantastic place for birds. The numbers of birds along the Gulf Coast is unparalleled.

Drew: That’s why I was so surprised when I got here, and met Steve and Donna, and they said there’s basically no baseline data to go off of.

Dr. Remsen: I mean, we’ve got our winter bird, and summer bird atlas stuff, but that’s it. Part of the problem is because of access. You know, it’s not like you can just go out there. You know, in order to study those birds on Isle Deniers, Cecilia had to build a little house out there. Wildlife and fisheries people built her a little camp, I mean that’s how it had to work. Access is a real impedement here.

Drew: So, when this spill first happened, what were your biggest concerns?

Dr. Remsen: Well, my biggest concern was not direct mortality to the birds, because I am a believer in population resiliency. You know, unless you wipe them out completely, they’re going to come back. Some more slowly than others, and especially in seabirds. Sea bird biology, Gulf Coast breeding biology in general is geared toward catastrophe. You know entire breeding seasons can be wiped out by hurricanes, or one Raccoon getting on an island. It’s a precarious event. And in fact, it is in seabirds in general. They live a long time, so it’s the breeding adults that are important for the population, not the actual offspring of any particular year. Their demography sort of relies on occasional successful breeding, rather than constant output or anything like that. You know the Brown Pelican story here in LA, can tell you how fast these things can bounce back. Brown Pelicans were extirpated from LA, and now there are thousands and thousands breeding here.

Drew: There must be 20,000 here in the state.

Dr. Remsen: I know, it’s amazing, it goes from zero to 20,000, I mean that’s the sad thing is that we don’t really know what the number is. We’re trying to fix that right now, with ABA money. We’re trying to scramble right now, we never thought there was a problem before. You know hindsight is 20/20.

My immediated concern was ecosystem destruction. Like a lot of people, I was more worried about waves of sludge continuing to wash into the marshes and killing the marshes, and then that accelerating coastal erosion. That was my big concern. Not the birds per se, but the whole marsh ecosystem, being jeopardized, well, you know more about this than I do. The wave action. It’s unbelievable how important the marsh vegetation is for the integrity of the coastline, that was my big concern, an immediated acceleration of loss of those coastal communities, and that doesn’t seem to be the case, and for that I’m tremendously relieved.

Drew: Grand terre has lost 20 feet of beach in just the past two months on the eastern tip of the island.

Dr. Remsen: Now, I’ve heard this second hand, maybe you can confirm it, but even in places where the vegetation has been destroyed, there’s green stuff sprouting out already?

Drew: I have seen that, even some of the Mangroves that lost their leaves initially are growing new leaves in places.

Dr. Remsen: Again, the whole ecosystem is disturbance adapted. Not oil disturbance, but perturbation is an essential component of this Gulf Coast system. If you look at it over centuries, just in terms of hurricanes alone, you’ve got a dynamic ecosystem that has a lot of resiliency, so now, I think that worry has subsided a little. At first I thought this was going to be an incredible environmental catastrophe. Now, I’m much more relaxed about it. My lingering concern is ecosystem perturbation at the molecular level almost, you know from contaminants destroying the phytoplankton, or zooplankton, or benthic organisms, you know something like that, and it’s stuff that I don’t know anything about, so it’s just this vague fear, that especially the chemicals from the dispersants is going to have some impact. I think that’s the main danger now. You know, some of the stuff that you’ve posted and others have posted about the Army Corps of Engineers and clean up workers and beach barriers. That stuff may have done more immediate damage than the actual oil did, that might be exaggerating, but maybe… But even there, you know one major storm on Elmer’s Island or even on Grand Isle would wipe them all out. What it represents is just these futile humans trying to hold back the tides, literally, I mean what a waste of time and energy, but even that, I suspect, and maybe I’m just a naïve optimist, but I suspect that two years from now you won’t see a trace of it.

A major winter storm can really rearrange those beaches.

I want to make sure that you know, as far as the birds, the populations of birds, nothing makes me madder than seeing some bird covered in oil washed up on the beach, or a crab, some poor crab. It just really gets me. I want to make clear that at least at the gut level that really gets me.