SPILL STUDIES CONTINUE; MINK EAT CRUDE OIL

By CHARLES WOHLFORTH
Daily News reporter

ANCHORAGE- A state study feeding crude oil to captive mink has been saved from cancellation along with several other studies to assess the damage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Biologists, environmentalists and state officials lobbied hard to keep alive the studies of peregrine falcons, river otters, and several other animals. But animal rights activists said they were glad the state and federal government trustees funding the work intended to drop the mink study, because they said it was cruel and unnecessary.

The Daily News obtained a document which lists the priority the damage assessment team gives each of the studies, including the mink, falcon and river otter studies. The list of dozens of biological and economic studies adds up to about $35 million, the amount Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan said last week will be spent on the work.

John Blake, a University of Alaska Fairbanks veterinarian who oversees the mink study, said it is funded through July, when it may continue with another batch of animals, depending on the results.

Officials generally refused to talk much about the studies, saying publicity could hurt their court case against Exxon for the damage of the spill. The decision of the trustees, who include Lujan, the secretaries of Agriculture and Commerce and the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, is not yet final.

Doug Miller, of the National Wildlife Federation, said he is pleased the studies were not eliminated, including the mink study, which he said will provide needed information on how oil affects the long term health of animals. He said some of the studies had only just started.

"It seemed absurd to terminate studies after four or five months," he said. "They were being terminated before they had even gone through a complete annual cycle, and certainly not a complete life cycle."

But Verena Gill, a local animal rights activist who orchestrated opposition to the mink study, said National Society for Animal Protection now will go ahead with a lawsuit to block it. Her letter writing campaign has already succeeded in bringing in many letters of condemnation to Fish and Game and the university, Blake said.

Gill said the study is poorly designed and morally wrong.

"In the wild there are so many variables that you can't apply what happens in the laboratory to what happens in the wild," she said.

But she said the reason most people are against the study is emotional.

"This is really a singular case. I think people are really fed up with animals being harmed by the oil industry in Alaska. . . . I just think it's gross that they're actually feeding oil to mink."

Blake said the study involves feeding mink food contaminated with weathered crude oil in concentrations of one part per million. The 110 female mink that ate the oil were bred last month. The purpose of the study is to determine how well they reproduce, then kill them and dissect them to learn how the oil affected their health.

In June, when the mink give birth, officials will decide if another year of study is needed to study exactly when in the reproductive cycle the oil is harmful, Blake said.

Blake and others have said no such study has been done on mink or similar mammals to determine how oil affects reproduction, although studies have been done with other chemicals. He said the results will be applicable to mink and other, similar animals in the wild.

He said the mink are not in pain.

"Our whole intention is to see if these animals eat this oil in their food, and remain healthy, can they still reproduce," Blake said.

The studies on mink, falcons, river otters, and other studies on gulls, storm petrels, pigeon guillemots, marbled murrelets, and various fish, were slated for cancellation in February by a lowerlevel group of state and federal officials designated by the trustees. Funding for the first year of work officially ran out Feb. 28.

But state officials and scientists put on a concerted push to win approval for the studies from higherlevel officials. The effort appears to have been a success, although several studies have been axed anyway.

Ted Cooney, a University of Alaska Fairbanks marine biologist, said a salmon fry study in which he was involved was cut and then reinstated. But when it was reinstated, the money was won back by Fish and Game and the National Marine Fisheries Service, leaving him out.

"I personally was pretty surprised that the cuts came when they did," Cooney said. "It seemed premature to cut that project before the pink salmon even came back."

---

Story Index: Main | The Impact On Life	Overall: story 194 of 380 The Impact On Life story 39 of 61