By George Altman, Press-Register
Monday, October 11, 2010WASHINGTON — Alabama and Mississippi are paying landowners $6.75 million in total to create artificial marshes, typically by flooding farm fields, for birds deprived of natural marshland by the oil spill, according to government information.
Top conservation officials in both states said that the decision to launch the federal program, dubbed the Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative, was made in the early stages of the spill, when no one knew how much oil would gush or for how long.
Although the surface of Gulf waters and shores appears to have escaped a worst-case scenario, they say the program is still doing good.
“Had we done nothing and then the worst would have happened, where would we be?” said Alabama State Conservationist William Puckett. …
Homer Wilkes, state conservationist for Mississippi, said that the “ounce of prevention” represented by the program is far better than the “pound of cure” that would have been required had birds been limited to oiled marshes. …
Puckett said that regardless of the program’s initial spill-related mission, new places for migratory birds to rest are beneficial. “The positive is, we did create thousands and thousands of acres of additional bird habitat,” he said. …
After oil spill, Alabama, Mississippi landowners paid to create artificial marshes
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