The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is launching a new, $1.4 million lead paint clean-up effort for former military buildings on Hawaii’s Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. American Bird Conservancy and other environmental groups have repeatedly expressed their concerns about the deaths of thousands of birds there.
According to letters from FWS, a $1.4 million study has been approved to develop and evaluate lead paint removal alternatives, and implement appropriate action by July 2011. This will mark the second phase of lead clean up that began in 2005 with the remediation of 24 buildings at a cost of $841,000.
“We are very happy to hear that the FWS lead clean-up effort is going to continue. We wish this whole process could have been accelerated so that tens of thousands of Laysan Albatross chicks could have been spared a slow and painful death from lead poisoning. Nevertheless, news of this latest move to solve the problem is gratefully received by all concerned about the fate of the albatrosses,” said Dr. Jessica Hardesty Norris, Director of ABC’s Seabirds Program.
The world's largest colony of Laysan Albatrosses, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, breeds on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge each year. This remarkable spectacle is marred by the terrible sight of thousands of poisoned birds dying of lead poisoning. Their deaths are caused when lead-based paint, peeling from dozens of aging buildings is eaten by curious albatross chicks. The chicks soon develop a lead poisoning condition known as droopwing, whereby they are unable to lift their developing wings off the ground. Each year, as many as 10,000 chicks are dying of the toxic effects of lead—which include starvation and dehydration.
FWS initially experimented with trying to prevent the chicks from eating the paint by covering the ground around the buildings in plastic shade cloth, and fencing off areas. However, this proved ineffective, because birds became entangled in the shade cloth as it degraded and birds adjacent to fenced areas continued to exhibit lead poisoning.
