Queen Bess Island: Restoration Success After Oil Spill Impact

Today, just a short boat ride from Grand Isle, Louisiana, a small island on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico is bustling with activity. Not with sunbathers, but with birds.

On Queen Bess Island, brown pelican, laughing gull, royal tern and sandwich tern are flying overhead, making their nests and raising their young. This thriving barrier island represents the hard-work and investment that has been made so far to restore habitats and wildlife injured in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Deepwater Horizon Damage

Fourteen years ago, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and leaked 134 million gallons of oil into the Gulf over the next 87 days, contaminating waters where birds rest and feed, the air where they fly and breathe, and coastal habitats where they nest, rest, and feed. Scientific studies in the aftermath of the spill estimated this caused the death of at least 50,000 birds.

To address this injury to birds and their habitat, the National Wildlife Federation and many partner organizations worked to ensure penalties and fines from the oil spill would be dedicated for projects to restore damaged and lost habitat for birds and establish or re-establish breeding bird colonies.

To date in Louisiana, oil spill funds have been used to restore more than 1,800 acres of habitat for colonial nesting waterbirds like the brown pelican and wading birds like the tri-colored heron.

Brown pelicans, least terns and laughing gulls are some of the birds that make up Queen Bess Island's population. Credit: Alisha RenfroLeast tern eggs rest in a small, shaded nest on the island. Credit: Alisha Renfro

Queen Bess Island Restoration

Queen Bess Island has historical significance in Louisiana as an important bird rookery. Louisiana's state bird, the brown pelican, had almost completely disappeared from the state's coast by 1963 due to habitat loss and the pesticide DDT causing birds to lay eggs with thin shells. In 1970, the brown pelican was listed an endangered under the Endangered Species Preservation Act, a precursor to the Endangered Species Act.

Between 1968 and 1976, brown pelican chicks from Florida were brought to Louisiana. In 1971, 11 brown pelican nests were documented on Queen Bess Island, making this tiny island the first place of successful recolonization of brown pelicans in coastal Louisiana and the beginning of an endangered species recovery success story. Brown pelicans were eventually removed from the endangered species list in 2009, only a few short months before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill began.

Restoration of Queen Bess Island with oil spill funds expanded the footprint of the island from just five acres to 37 acres, creating habitat for several species of birds, including brown pelicans, laughing gull, royal tern, and sandwich tern. Restoration of the island was completed in 2019.

By 2023, nearly 30,000 birds were observed on the island and 6,000 brown pelican nests were counted on the island, doubling both the birds and nests that were observed in 2010.

While the impacts of the oil spill were devastating to the habitats and wildlife of the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana is making progress to address its injuries. The restoration of Queen Bess Island is a restoration success story not only for the recovery of brown pelicans from the brink of extinction, but now also from some of the heavy impacts to wildlife and habitat from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.