Death Toll in the Gulf

Update:  It is about money, people! BP is having second thoughts about the bottom kill.  If they go through with the relief well plugging operation the reservoir cannot be produced from the wells already drilled.  BP has its greedy eye on coming back to Mississippi Block 252 someday, but it would rather not have to drill another expensive well to produce the same reservoir.  Retired Admiral Thad Allen in charge of the government's crisis response insists the bottom kill will happen.  Guess who is going to win that argument.  BP may have some leverage too.  If the company is forced to do a bottom kill, it may argue it is entitled to royalty relief for an uneconomic deep well under the Deepwater Royalty Relief Act.  Are your teeth grinding yet, Mr. President?

{5.08.10}British Petroleum has finally, finally cemented in the Macondo blowout from the top.  Only completion of the relief well and cementing from below remains to hopefully permanently seal in the worst well disaster in history. The death toll of wildlife is still early in assessment, but the official count is 3,606 birds, 508 endangered sea turtles and 67 marine mammals according to the BBC. BP should be prosecuted for taking* each and everyone in violation of the Marine Mammal Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Migratory Bird Act just to name the most prominent federal laws protecting these animals. More than 2,100 birds, turtles and marine mammals have been found oiled but alive. Some of those undoubtedly will perish from exposure to the toxic crude and dispersant. Countless more have died anonymously. Yes, the oil is disappearing, but the dead remain to remind us of man's recklessness.
[top photo credit: NY Daily News; bottom, UK Guardian]

*"to take" under the federal Endangered Species Act is to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, kill, trap, capture or collect any threatened or endangered species, and may include significant habitat modification where it actually kills or injures a listed species through impairment of essential behavior such as nesting or reproduction.  Presumably the 11 humans killed in the disaster were not slaves.