Audubon’s Dr. Paul Kemp testifies at Gulf recovery gathering

Dr. Paul Kemp, coastal scientist and Audubon vice president, testified at the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) hearing held October 27 in New Iberia, Louisiana. NRDA is a legal process used to quantify damage caused by BP's Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, assess fines on responsible parties and design recovery projects. Dr. Kemp urged authorities to conduct NRDA in a transparent, comprehensive and scientifically rigorous fashion and to support important bird conservation initiatives. His full testimony follows:

"I am Dr. Paul Kemp, and I lead National Audubon’s Louisiana Coastal Initiative out of our office in Baton Rouge and our refuge about 40 miles southwest of New Iberia. I am pleased that the NRDA trustees have chosen to initiate outreach and communication to the public at this initial phase of the NRDA process, within a month of the Notice of Intent. As you heard from Iliana Peña and other Audubon Texas representatives in Galveston, and from Melanie Driscoll, Louisiana Director of Bird Conservation, from my office last night in Harahan, the National Audubon Society through its staff, chapters and volunteers stands ready to assist the trustees both in providing information and in interpreting what is being done and found at all stages in the NRDA process. I hope you are starting to understand that there are dedicated Auduboners working hard for birds and the people who love them everywhere you go on the northern Gulf Coast.

"Melanie explained last night that her work is to identify and conserve areas in Louisiana that are critical to bird species of concern. This fits within a larger effort that I manage in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund and National Wildlife Federation to build partnerships and funding that will put Louisiana’s collapsing coast on a more geologically and ecologically sustainable trajectory.

"Of course, everyone knows that the barrier islands of the Mississippi River deltaic plain, which are critical nesting areas for a number of sea- and shorebirds, received the most oil impacts caused by the Macondo well blowout of any lands. National Audubon is a coastal landowner, managing nearly 26,000 acres of marsh and 10 miles of Gulf shoreline at our Paul J. Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary just west of Vermilion Bay since 1924. I led the National Audubon survey that found the westernmost confirmed Deepwater Horizon shoreline oil on shell beaches immediately west of our property near Cheniere au Tigre.

"During the period following the blowout, Audubon was able to assist the federal and state agencies responding to the oil emergency by providing information about critical areas and species and by supplying volunteers to assist in transport of oiled birds and training up shorebird monitoring teams through a volunteer center established in Moss Point, Mississippi, to use an oiled bird protocol developed with Louisiana State University.

"Prior to the Macondo well blowout, our attention at National Audubon was focused on advocating for early construction of river diversions and marsh and barrier island restoration projects to try to return this amazingly productive but also greatly damaged deltaic landscape into a once more sustainably functioning coastal ecosystem. Many of these projects will serve to provide and improve habitat for species that suffered mortality due to the 'spill.' The Brown Pelican is the best-known species that could not get away from the oil and would benefit from construction and enhancement of additional barrier island habitat, preferably in more inland locations where river diversions can be effective in keeping oil from future spills at bay. National Audubon and a number of partner organizations are currently developing 'bird island' enhancement projects using artificial oyster reefs that are suitable for construction along the western margins of Breton and Chandeleur sounds. We would like you to consider such a strategy as one most closely responsive to addressing the damages sustained by barrier island nesting species.

"We recommend that the NRDA trustees adopt certain principles, whether formally or informally, along the following lines:

1. Sustain NRDA studies as long as necessary to get a high degree of confidence that we understand all short- and long-term effects of both the oil and dispersants released into the Gulf that are significant to the ecosystem.
2. Build public support for follow-through on the studies by regularly releasing raw data and incremental findings for review outside of the NRDA agencies. More transparency will be critical to how this NRDA process is perceived by the public.
3. Damage assessment should address deficits caused by reduced ecosystem services, a broader, more up-to-date standard than has been applied in the past.
4. NRDA trustees should coordinate closely with the president's Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force to ensure that recommendations for restoration of damaged natural resources and services addresses systemic problems resulting from decades of abuse and mismanagement.
5. NRDA trustees should take a Gulf-wide approach to damage assessment that does not stop at the shoreline but reaches out across the Continental Shelf to include critical marine spawning and foraging grounds, and perhaps temporary changes in take of commercially and recreationally important species. While every effort should be made to avoid a list of unconnected and potentially conflicting projects, it is imperative that most funds and restoration  efforts be allocated to areas that received the most impacts from the Macondo well blowout.

"Thank you for your attention and the opportunity to present our views."