Officials plan to restore birds’ habitat

SEATTLE – A 1991 oil spill that killed thousands of seabirds along Washington state’s coast has spurred a plan to provide 200 years of protection for 900 acres of coastal forest – critical nesting habitat for federally protected marbled murrelets.

Tribal, state and federal officials gathered Tuesday at Neah Bay, on the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula, to mark completion of a $5.2 million habitat restoration plan to offset damage from the Tenyo Maru oil spill, according to a news release from the state Department of Ecology and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Japanese fishing vessel sank in 540 feet of water about 23 miles northwest of the peninsula’s Cape Flattery after the ship was struck by the Chinese freighter Tuo Hai in heavy fog on July 22, 1991.

Over the next month, the Tenyo Maru released more than 100,000 gallons of oil, which fouled beaches and killed wildlife from Canada’s Vancouver Island to northern Oregon.

In December 1989, the same area had been oiled by 231,000 gallons of bunker fuel from the oil barge Nestucca, which lost its tow in 20-foot seas at the mouth of Grays Harbor on the central Washington coast.

The heaviest oiling from the Tenyo Maru was along the Makah Indian Reservation coast along the peninsula’s northwest corner, and along the Olympic National Park shoreline.

Scientists estimate that 7 percent to 11 percent of the marbled murrelet population on Washington’s coast may have died from the spill. At that time, the entire state population was estimated at roughly 5,000 birds. The marbled murrelet was listed as a threatened species in 1992 under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The Tenyo Maru spill also killed thousands of other seabirds.

Even without major spills, the murrelet population is believed to be declining 4 percent to 7 percent each year.

The owner of the Chinese freighter paid a $9 million penalty that went into a special fund created by tribal, state and federal agencies, with $5.2 million earmarked for seabird restoration and preservation, and $3.8 million to cover spill containment costs.

A committee representing the Makah Indian tribe, Fish & Wildlife, Ecology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used the restoration money to help pay for a rescue tug at Neah Bay, support nesting site studies and conduct a long-term seabird census.

The committee bought conservation easements for two parcels of Makah tribal land to provide future additional habitat for marbled murrelets.

The easements “will take that land out of production for any kind of timber harvesting or anything else that would harm the habitat for 200 years,” Hart said Wednesday. “A lot of this is either old-growth timber or important cliffside habitat where a lot of seabirds build their nests.”