Oil Sands Development Could Kill Millions Of Birds

"An anonymous tip last April alerted Canadian officials to the fact that 500 ducks had mistaken an oil sands company's pollutant-filled reservoir in Alberta as a safe place to land. To the public's dismay, only three birds survived.

Hundreds of decomposed ducks have since risen to the surface, leading Syncrude Canada to clarify last week that its lake-sized reservoir, known as a tailings pond, in fact killed an estimated 1,606 birds, mostly mallards. Tailings ponds hold a watery mix of clay, sand, hydrocarbons, and heavy metals that remains after the oil extraction process.

The company's allegedly negligent environmental management has become symbolic of the problems associated with the development of oil sands - strips of sand or clay mixed with a dense form of petroleum known as bitumen. While the true impact of the fuel's extraction and production on wildlife and the climate is still unknown, environmentalists caution that further investments in oil sands would result in much wider damage.

To quantify the potential impact on migratory bird species, the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) explored how many birds - currently alive or yet to be born - would be lost if all the oil sands projects proposed in Alberta came to pass. The report, discussed at a Washington, D.C., briefing on Friday, estimates a maximum death toll of 166 million birds over the next 50-60 years.

"The numbers are of much greater magnitude than anyone imagined because no one ever studied the whole impact of these projects," said lead author Jeff Wells, a senior scientist at the Seattle-based Boreal Songbird Initiative.

Many of the migratory birds threatened by oil sands development already face the prospects of extinction, according to the Canadian government. Endangered species include the whooping crane and piping plover, the NRDC report said."

ORIGINAL SOURCE: Worldwatch Institute