pelican

Last year author Douglas Brinkley published his intriguing, 800-plus-page account of Theodore Roosevelt's crusade for the environment, "The Wilderness Warrior." I just recently got my copy, on the 41st day of the gulf oil spill.
So why do I mention that?
Well because, starting in the first chapter, Brinkley gets right to the heart of the whole issue of national environmental policy, which has taken on a dreadful new dimension in the Gulf of Mexico since publication of his book.
Brinkley writes of how Teddy Roosevelt, just over a century ago, appalled by the annual slaughter of millions of birds for decorative feathers (mostly for women's hats) took direct action. On behalf of snowy egrets, white ibises, great blue herons and brown pelican, among others.
By decree, on March 14, 1903, the 26th president created the nation's first wildlife refuge -- Pelican Island, along Florida's Atlantic coast. And on Oct. 10, 1904, he created a similar refuge at Breton Island, Louisiana, part of the marshy Mississippi delta south of New Orleans.
And Teddy, ever the dedicated naturalist, went on to create many, many more.
See? It took us a little over 125 years to start building a national refuge system. And now, a little over 100 years later, we've started wrecking it.
Like with the feathers. it isn't vindictive or personal. It's just an accident, a part of doing business. Collateral damage.
Now it's true I don't yet know just how destructive the gulf spill has been, or will be, to the Breton refuge. But Breton is close to the fishing hamlet of Venice, La., and oil began washing ashore at Venice in late April.
There's preliminary optimism this week about efforts to begin stemming the volume of newly gushing oil. So perhaps it's less likely that a poisonous tentacle will eventually wrap around the south tip of Florida and devastate Atlantic coastal areas such as Pelican Island. Worst-case predictions have suggested as much.
Still, nobody yet seems to have an over-all, effective plan to deal with the spill. Quite possibly a modern Teddy wouldn't have one either. But Bay Petroleum at least would know there was a big stick as well as a soft voice in the White House.
In closing, I trust Douglas Brinkley will not be offended if I pass along a couple of pertinent quotations from "Wilderness Warrior":
". . .Roosevelt knew these funny-looking birds were of incalculably greater value alive than dead; if the brown pelican passed into extinction, Florida, he believed, would lose one of its most enchanting charms . . .
"He saw the planet as one single biological organism pulsing with life and championed the interconnectedness of nature as his Sermon on the Mount. As forces of globalization ran amok, Roosevelt's stout resoluteness to protect our environment is a strong reminder of our national wilderness heritage, as well as an increasingly urgent call to arms."