While clean up workers continue efforts to plug the Deep Horizon oil well once and for all, Louisiana's delicate wetlands continue to suffer. The wetlands are a vital part of the ecosystem, providing a habitat to much of Louisiana's wildlife and a natural buffer against strong storm surges. Because much of Louisiana's 7,700 miles of shoreline is composed of wetlands and marshes, the spill related damage to the ecosystem has been substantial. Dead vegetation, oily water, blackened marsh grasses, and soiled dirt offer an alarming postcard from the state's endangered bayous as each tide brings another wave of oil pollution. The fragility of the wetlands makes many clean up efforts futile as further degeneration is caused by walking on the oil soaked grass and removal of soiled vegetation destroys the roots that prevent marshland from eroding into the open water. While strategies for wetland cleanup have included controlled burns, fresh water flushes, and even an unsuccessful attempt to clean stained grasses with pads resembling large Q-tips, the wetlands present a conundrum to scientists.
" [The wetlands] are so sensitive that they succumb to the oil spill impacts, but you can't go in and clean them up because you cause more damage," said Wes Tunnell, associate director of the Harte Research Institute for the Gulf of Mexico Studies in Corpus Christi.
Like Tunnell, many scientists favor a hands-off approach to wetland restoration, believing that time and Mother Nature's natural microbes offer the best hope for the damaged wetlands.
With over 2,300 miles of wetlands lost in the last seventy years, Louisiana marshlands are disappearing at an alarming rate. Much of the wetland depletion has been worsened by harmful land-use practices as levees and canals built to control flooding and maintain oil and gas industry pipelines have had detrimental ecological effects on the ecosystem. With relatively little scientific knowledge of the long-term effects of such a massive oil spill on coastal marshlands, the resiliency of Louisiana's wetlands will again be tested.
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