Oil Industry Vastly Underestimated Bird Deaths in Northern Alberta

I recently read an article from the CBC News website entitled "Oil Industry Lowballs Bird Deaths: Study". The article referenced a study done by two scientists researching the mortality of birds in Northern Alberta that were caused by the oil sands tailing ponds. Kevin Timoney and Robert Ronconi conducted the study and published it in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology. They suspected that the number of bird deaths per year that the oil industry was reporting was far below the actual value. During their research they observed number of bird landings in the tailing ponds, the number of dead carcasses, and the number of birds that migrated over the a 120km^2 area. They assumed a 80 - 90% morality rate of birds which had been exposed to oil. They used this data along with numbers from previous studies to come up with their final morality counts.


After reading both the article and primary literature the reader could see that most of the numbers in the CBC news article were accurate, they were perhaps just used out of context. For example in bold near the middle of the article it says 1973 deaths per year, this however was just a median of the range that the scientists determined over a 14 year span. Later in the article CBC does mention the range but by this point the reader already has the median number his their head and is more likely to remember the original number. Timoney found a range of 458 to 5029 bird deaths over the last 14 years. Another example would be right in the first few sentences of the article it says "birds are likely dying in Alberta oil sands tailings ponds at a rate that is at least 30 times higher than that suggested by the oil industry". The oil industry reported number was only 65 per year and so after doing some quick math that is 1950 deaths. This number is close to the median however the word least implies that in a year with the fewest deaths the industry was off by 30 times. Well if the minimum on the range is only 458 then that is only 7 times more deaths. It is apparent that the CBC has glorified this number to spark interest in readers and made sure to include it near the top of the article. The more extreme of a claim they make the more newsworthy the story is and more likely it is to intrigue readers.


As far as the strength of the primary source itself, they do mention a few possible sources for error in their study. Although they did acknowledge these sources of error themselves, it does not mean they can be neglected. The source that I believe would have caused the largest difference is that they never recorded any numbers for bird landings in the tailing ponds at night. There may very well have been far less but the number of night landings would in no way be zero. Timoney and Ronconi also only observed the landing numbers during the migration seasons, there were none between November and early April. During these months there would not have been any migrating birds but there may have been birds that live in the area year round and it is highly unlikely that not a single one landing in a tailing pond at some point. The final source of error that i had a major issue with was that they predicted a mortality rate of 80 - 90 % of birds that came into contact with oil, after admitting that the percentage is actually unknown (Timoney and Ronconi, 2010). The one common aspect of their sources of error was that they would have all resulted in their final mortality numbers being less then the real number of bird deaths. I found it odd that the news article did not mention this seeing as they had already exaggerated some of their numbers. There were a few less major sources of error as well but in comparison they would not have had nearly the same effect as the three discussed above.

Regardless of their multiple sources of error Timoney and Ronconi's main conclusion was that the oil industry should no longer be in charge of reporting wildlife morality in tailing ponds. “We can no longer let the fox guard the hen house." Said Timoney in an interview with CBC. They suggest that those duties be passed over to the government and that the oil industry must implement better devices to deter wildlife from landing in the tailing ponds. So even though Timoney and Ronconi's study might not have been extremely accurate, their conclusion is still legitimate based on the fact that their numbers most likely underestimate the real number of deaths, which would have led to the same conclusion.

Joel Schillings

To view the CBC news story video, click here

References:
Timoney, K. and Ronconi, R. 2010. Annual Bird Mortality in the Bitumen Tailing Ponds in Northeastern Alberta, Canada. The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, 122(3): 569 - 576
www.bioone.org/doi/pdf/10.1676/09-181.1

CBC News September 7, 2010. Oil Industry Lowballs Bird Deaths: Study
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/09/07/oilsands-tailing-ponds-bird-deaths.html