The B.P. Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico can sometimes seem an entire world away. But Canada and the Rocky Mountains are intimately linked to the Gulf Coast. Every year, a host of birds that call the Rocky Mountains and Jasper home for summer breeding make the trip south through the Gulf of Mexico when the temperatures begin to turn. As the migration season approaches, their lives are now being threatened by a disaster that threatens to radically alter that migration.

The iconic Canadian symbol, the loon, an animal which can be spotted on Lake Edith as well as Pyramid and Patricia Lake, migrates south to the Gulf for the winter. Ruby-throated hummingbirds, though more prominent east of the Rocky Mountains, can be seen around Jasper in the spring and summer. They make the briefest of stops (only one day) on the Gulf Coast to fuel up before continuing on. Western Willets, Olive-sided Fly Catchers, even the Whooping Crane (a very specific bird which calls the north-eastern most tip of Alberta and the North-West Territories its home in summer and Louisiana in the winter) has been spotted around Jasper.

“There definitely are some birds from that area that make their way down here,” said Clinton Jeske, a wildlife biologist at the National Wetlands Research Center, one of the leading ornithologists in Louisiana and a Gulf Coast native. “There’s no question about that... but there’s not a lot of birds from Alberta, we tend to get more song birds and that from Saskatchewan and areas where it’s flatter and marshier, so it’s not large numbers in comparison, but there’s no doubt there’s some.”

Anne Williams, a naturalist who has worked in Jasper for over 20 years, estimates there are probably between 100 and 150 different species of migratory birds that travel south through the Jasper area during the autumn and winter. She cautiously estimates that about 50 of those birds could travel through the Gulf Coast region, although they are spread all through the Gulf from Mexico to Texas all the way through to Florida during the autumn.

“It’s a difficult number to tabulate specifically,” said Williams. “There are some, but it really depends on how you define the Gulf Coast.”

Williams and Jeske explained more birds from the Rocky Mountains probably travel through the Texas part of the Gulf than the Louisiana/Mississippi sections, the areas closest to the spill, but even the Texas parts are threatened by the spill, said Jeske.

“The whole region right now, any spot along here, they’re all in danger right now,” said Jeske.

Both Jeske and Williams confirmed all of the Gulf Coast is incredibly important for the hundreds of thousands of birds that migrate from Canada to parts of South and Central America. Both described the entire area as essentially a giant pit stop. Teeming with life, the Gulf Coast, stretching around Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, provides a valuable source of energy for birds travelling thousands and thousands of kilometres. 

“It’s critical that any migratory bird has a place to feed because they’re just expending so much energy as they fly. These areas are really abundant when it comes to food, so they’re highly important,” said Jeske. “Those food sources are certainly at risk now.”

Jeske explained many of the birds from the Rocky Mountains feed in Louisiana’s mangrove-like areas that are adjacent to the Gulf Coast. They’re basically areas that are protected from the harsher conditions of the Gulf and where oak and fruit trees can grow, he explained. Fruits are plentiful there and insects abound too. After flying thousands and thousands of miles, the mangrove areas provide a place where migrating birds from the mountains can feed, rest and recuperate for the rest of their journey.

The worry is these areas could become inundated with oil from the spill should a storm blow through the coast. Oil has already touched down on the beaches out in front of the feeding areas. The mangroves are far enough back from the coast that they shouldn’t be affected by the normal ebb and flow of the tide, but a storm could blow the oil in. The insects and fruits would likely be wiped out, at least for one migration cycle, which would be devastating for birds passing through.

Long term, the trees may fair better, said Jeske, as much of the landscape around the Gulf Coast is used to absorbing oil because it seeps from deposits along the Gulf Coast naturally. The problem now is that so much oil has leaked out from the BP spill, it may overwhelm any natural defenses.

Much of that worry depends on how severe the storm season in the Gulf is this year, said Jeske.

“When you get a storm, it churns up all that water that’s beneath the surface and brings things beneath the surface up and out,” he said.

That is especially problematic right now because much of the oil that has leaked out of the Deepwater Horizon spill is still currently beneath the surface of the Gulf. The U.S. government and BP have used chemical dispersants to breakdown much of the oil and that has resulted in large ‘clouds’ of oily fluids that are floating through the Gulf.

Jeske said he worried a storm could bring that oil to the surface and then blast it directly at the coast. In 2008 there was Hurricane Gustav and Ike, but in 2009, there were no storms approaching their size. Jeske said that the coast gets hit by major hurricanes nearly ever year, so the fact that nothing happened last year makes him think this year could be extremely bad.

Meteorologists and forecasters in the U.S. are predicting that 2010’s Gulf Coast hurricane season could be as bad as 2005’s, when Hurricane Katrina hit.

Jeske said that many of the areas that birds migrate to are already seriously stressed from hurricanes in 2008 and to be hit again, this time by storm that is also full of churned up, chemically-laden oil, could really create some widespread destruction.

“You get hit double, really,” said Jeske.

Other worries abound.

Jeske said while oil has reached many parts of the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi River has managed to keep some of the oil at bay with its currents. Those push-back forces which kept the oil away from some of the Louisiana Coast are now tapering off as the summer sets in. That means more oil could soon be flowing towards Louisiana.

Overall, however, Jeske said no one is entirely sure where the oil is going to go. Storms could blow it west towards Texas or Florida or even through the Florida Keys and onto the eastern seaboard. It’s all very much dependent on what the weather does, something which no one can predict with any great regularity.

Jeske said that in general, he’s adopted ‘hope for the best, prepare for the worst’ as his guide to thinking about the Gulf spill. Whether it pays off or not, remains to be seen.

“There’s a lot of oil out in that Gulf,” he said. “Where it all comes popping out, that’s really just a complete unknown and it’s just completely out of our hands. Only time will tell.”