State bird symbolizes resilience

Oiled pelicans on Queen Bess Island remain among the most indelible images from the 2010 BP oil spill. Crude from the damaged Deepwater Horizon rig fouled beaches on the state bird's island nesting grounds and in waters surrounding it.

Recovery from such a tragic fate makes the pelicans' rebound on this tiny but important sliver of land such a marvel.

Just over a week ago, state Wildlife and Fisheries Commission approved a measure that converts the island off Lafourche Parish to a wildlife refuge.

“Designating Queen Bess Island as a state wildlife refuge will allow us to further safeguard this bird haven as we work to improve it and restore nesting acreage,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a news release.

The state launched a $19 million project this fall  that will create an additional 30 acres of pelican nesting habitat and seven acres for other birds. Fittingly, the money will come from a settlement between BP and the federal government for damage caused by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Work is expected to be complete early next year.

The 37-acre island hosts more than 4,400 nests for a variety of waterbirds and is the state's fourth largest brown pelican rookery. It was also the starting point for the state’s effort to bring the species back in 1968 after it had almost died off.

In the 1960s, Louisiana had lost its state bird to the effects of DDT, a now-banned pesticide. In 1919, the state estimated the birds’ population at 50,000. By 1955, a survey estimated 5,000 adults and fledglings lived on East Timbalier Island, off the Terrebonne and Lafourche parish coasts just west of Port Fourchon. Six years later, however, no nesting pairs were spotted across the state’s entire coast. By 1963, there were no brown pelican sightings anywhere in Louisiana.

Scientists determined the chemical pesticide prevented the birds, which nest on the ground, from reproducing. In 1968, Louisiana began a project to restock the pelicans, and Queen Bess Island, in Barataria Bay near Grand Isle in Jefferson Parish, was ground zero. Once a popular nesting spot, the state Wildlife and Fisheries biologists thought it would be the perfect spot to reintroduce the pelican.

More than five decades later, coastal erosion, storms, tides and sinking land have reduced the island to a sliver of its former grandeur. Nonetheless, residents can celebrate the brown pelican's comeback, especially on Queen Bess Island, as a real Louisiana success story.

-- Editorials represent the opinions of this newspaper and not any single individual.