Ed Perry is an aquatic biologist who retired in 2002 after a 30-year career with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, where he supervised the section responsible for protecting streams and wetlands. Since 2007, has traveled across Pennsylvania as an advocate for the National Wildlife Federation’s global warming campaign, educating hunters, anglers and conservationists about the effects of climate change on Pennsylvania’s fish and wildlife.

After 20+ years of study, the Environmental Protection Agency finally released the first ever rule to reduce mercury emissions.

I am a life-long fisherman, and my wife and two sons and I have fished and camped all over our great country. We’ve caught grayling and west slope cutthroat trout from high mountain lakes and had a delicious meal of fish over our night-time camp fire.

Fishing the Penobscot/ photo by Alan Gregory

Since the Susquehanna is down-wind from hundreds of coal-fired power plants, I know the fish are contaminated with mercury. In fact, mercury has contaminated the river so much that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania recommends eating only one meal of walleye and smallmouth bass per month in that reach of the river beginning at the New York border extending 200 miles downstream.

This year, for the first time, I will be taking my grandson fishing on the Susquehanna River. Like all kids, he will want to keep the fish he catches. But I will have to tell him to throw them back. There is no way I would subject that still growing little kid to something as toxic as mercury.

Frankly, it is hard to believe that up until this year, mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants was unregulated. Pennsylvania ranks 2nd in the country in pounds of mercury emitted from coal-fired power plants and we have 3 of the nation’s top 10 dirtiest power plants. This is one area where Pennsylvanians don’t want to be a leader.

Even though the toxicity of mercury pollution is well documented in the scientific literature, the coal industry and its allies have fought against sensible mercury regulations for decades. Frankly, I have had it with the tired refrain that new regulations will damage our economy, when in reality, it is our families, our kids, and those with health problems who are paying the real price for our inaction.
It is long past time that we implement the technically and economically feasible alternatives to unregulated mercury emissions. This is one sportsman who is grateful to EPA and this Administration for standing up to the fossil fuel industry.

Tell the Obama Administration how you feel about mercury and other toxic chemicals that are polluting our air and water >>

I never get used to the “Please keep me anonymous,” sign-off on emails from my fisherman friend who, since the oil spill, works for BP 7 days a week. Having worked on coastal restoration with fishing communities along the Louisiana coast prior to the oil disaster, I have gained a level of trust with people who now offer me their confidential stories and photos of the areas they love. It is a heartbreaking experience to receive their images from the field – photos of fragile and beautiful places that we’d been working together to restore prior to the oil spill. 

The roots of fishermen run deep in the Mississippi Delta. Some of their families have been making their living off the wetlands for centuries and their love and respect for the ecosystem is great. So, although we see distressing images from the Gulf coast in the media and sometimes from our own camera lens, it is an entirely different experience to get the pictures from the people who are watching their livelihoods, their passion, and their heritage slip away. This is compounded by the fact that they take these pictures discretely because they now work to clean up the oil for BP and fear they’ll lose their jobs – the only source of income they foresee for a long time – for being too vocal.

I receive the images and the stories with a great sense of responsibility. I am proud that, as part of the NWF team, I can survey and report the sites that once teamed with bright pink roseate spoonbills, brown pelicans, and great white egrets. I can make sure my friend’s story is heard.

Many of my friends’ lives were dramatically impacted by the Exxon Valdez oil spill more than 20 years ago. They went from fishermen to conservationists who happened to fish.

Why?

They saw the devastation the Exxon Valdez oil spill caused to the environment, and ultimately to their community. And they realized that in a world where enormous companies have a profit motive and the means to spend a great deal of money lobbying our government, someone needs to pay attention, to be the squeaky wheel that ensures our coastlines are not oiled.
Mostly what I hear from these folks is sorrow and anger. They remember the oiled coastline of Prince William Sound, and the wildlife that died. And they remember the cost to the fishing town when the herring didn’t come back. Twenty years later, the herring still haven’t come back.

And you know, they also remember being told that nothing could go wrong with the oil tankers, and that the Sound was safe. And they feel sorry and angry for the folks on the Gulf Coast who heard the same thing about the oil rigs.

From Anger to Action

After the Exxon Valdez oil spill, my friends and people around the country used their anger to change things to make oil shipping safer. They changed the rules to require double hulled tankers. Even more importantly, they changed the rules so that in Prince William Sound, a citizen oversight committee was created to watch over oil tankers, to do their own studies of tanker safety, to do their own inspections of oil facilities to make sure the rules were being followed.

We need to take that concept and make it happen all across this country for all oil and gas development. But first, we need to pass an energy bill that moves us into a prosperous future and out of a past where we convince ourselves over and over again that we have to accept the enormous price oil and gas development can exact on wildlife, people and our communities.

Tell your Senators we need to stop pursuing unsafe energy options and pass clean energy legislation now.

“The Day the Water Died”

In fall of the year after the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, the National Wildlife Federation sponsored a series of hearings where more than 120 Alaskans impacted by the oil spill testified before a commission about their views and concerns, illustrating the grave impacts of the spill on Alaska’s wildlife and citizens.

Their stories, thoughts and emotions were then brought together by the National Wildlife Federation in a publication titled, The Day the Water Died.

For more personal stories behind the tragedy of Exxon Valdez, read these excerpts from the testimonies.

By Jim Adams, NWF Regional Executive Director, Alaska Regional Center and Western Regional Center

Help ensure NWF has the funding needed to be on the front lines helping wildlife >>
 

For all the latest news on how the oil spill is impacting the Gulf Coast’s wildlife & to learn how you can help, visit www.nwf.org/OilSpill.

Shrimpers, watermen and their families are being impacted by the BP oil disaster. Their story needs to be heard too. National Wildlife Federation Ambassador Leilani Munter interviewed me about their plight during our tour of the Gulf Coast today.