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Oil killed 200,000 birds
Paul Brown and John Vincent
7th March 2003
The Guardian
The Prestige oil disaster killed about 200,000 birds from 71 species, making it one of the worst ecological disasters in the north-east Atlantic.
About a quarter of the victims were over-wintering birds from British and Irish coast breeding colonies, said the British Trust for Ornithology, which made the estimates from 21,500 birds recovered.
But the thickness of the oil from the tanker, which sank off Spain's Galicia coast in November, and the number of birds which sank in the sea or were bulldozed by recovery teams, meant the casualties could be higher, possibly exceeding the worst recorded spill, the 1999 sinking of the Erika, off Brittany, which killed 300,000 birds.
The oldest birds known to have died include a 27-year-old great skua from Shetland, a 25-year-old guillemot from Scotland, and an Orkney puffin, 21. Many puffins, razorbills, gannets, great skuas and lesser black-backed gulls died. The worst hit colony was Great Saltee Island, Co Wexford, where 1,500 birds perished.
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