Exxon Spill Killed as Many as 270,000 Birds, Report Says
ANCHORAGE — The Exxon Valdez oil spill killed between 90,000 and 270,000 sea birds, making it the deadliest such accident in history, and it will take up to 70 years for wildlife to recover, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported Friday.
The new mortality estimates are based on the number of carcasses recovered from Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska, as well as the known population of animals in the once-pristine region polluted by 11 million gallons of crude oil that spewed from the supertanker Exxon Valdez when it ran aground March 24.
“On a global scale, the northern Gulf of Alaska harbors enormous populations of marine birds, and so the magnitude of losses from the Exxon Valdez spill was predictable and, not surprisingly, exceeds any other record of oil mortality we can find,” said Fish and Wildlife Service biologists John Piatt and Calvin Lensink in their report.
“It will take years and decades for some populations to return to pre-spill numbers,” the biologists said.
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