Crude oil from a ruptured pipeline at Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara has moved south to Coal Oil Point Reserve, where threatened Western Snowy Plovers are in the middle of their nesting season. The Santa Barbara Audubon Society, which has been working closely with the reserve on protecting the birds, is standing by to help in any way it can.

“I was out there yesterday, and I was pretty optimistic at that point that the oil wouldn’t reach Coal Oil Point,” said Santa Barbara Audubon Society co-president Steve Ferry. “But things changed overnight.”

State and federal oil spill response agencies have no yet asked for volunteer help. Ferry said that volunteers from Santa Barbara Audubon have been standing by.

According to Ferry, Coal Oil Point Reserve normally has about 25 pairs of nesting Western Snowy Plovers this time of year, and as many as 20 chicks. During the nesting season, his chapter has volunteer docents on the beach, working two-hour shifts, educating the public about the need to stay away from the birds’ fragile beach nests.

Ferry said that his chapter is concerned that the oil spill will actually bring a large number of well-intentioned people to the location, which could present problems for the Western Snowy Plover nests. He advised people against coming to the beach unless they were part of an organized volunteer effort. Those interested in volunteering should first contact the reserve at: copr.conservation@lifesci.ucsb.edu.

Ferry repeated a criticism heard often in the last 24 hours that the spill should have been detected and stopped much sooner.

“What bothers me about this is that it wasn’t detected immediately and shut off,” Ferry said. “We hear about how sophisticated their systems are, and yet we don’t know about this until a passerby sees it coming out of the ground.”

Coal Oil Point is the site of one of the greatest success stories for the Western Snowy Plover. Although the site was a historical breeding area for the species, there was no recorded nesting between the 1970s and 2001, according to Andrea Jones, Audubon California’s director of bird conservation. Beach disturbance and habitat loss were the problem.

Beginning in 2001, Cristina Sandoval, the reserve director at Coal Oil Point, began an aggressive campaign to restore the beach and attract the birds back. The Santa Barbara Audubon Society worked closely with the Reserve, and eventually the birds came back. Sandoval is a former Audubon California board member.

Contacted today, Sandoval said that the reserve has seen a great deal of activity today. She said that oil spill response teams had proposed putting barriers on the beach, but that this idea was ultimately rejected because the process would have caused a lot of disturbance for the birds nesting on the sand.

"I am crossing fingers that the wind will take the oil to a different way," she said.

The Western Snowy Plover has been living on the Pacific Coast for thousands of years, but was listed by the federal government as threatened in 1993, due to low population and decreased habitat.

(photo of Western Snowy Plover by Len Blumin)