Some 70,000 turtle eggs to be whisked far from oil, June 30, 2010, by The Associated Press, carried on The Raw Story, used with permission, excerpt quoted verbatim:

Update: “Two environmental groups have announced plans to file suit to prevent BP from burning alive endangered sea turtles in the cleanup of the Gulf Coast,” Democracy Now! reports.

“The Center for Biological Diversity and Turtle Island Restoration Network say they’ll file suit against BP as well as the US Coast Guard under the Endangered Species Act,” the daily public news show adds.

A RAW STORY article on sea turtles being burned alive has gone viral over the Internet, receiving over 16,000 Facebook links.

Original AP story follows

An effort to save thousands of sea turtle hatchlings from dying in the oily Gulf of Mexico will begin in the coming weeks in a desperate attempt to keep an entire generation of threatened species from vanishing.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will coordinate the plan, which calls for collecting about 70,000 turtle eggs in up to 800 nests buried in the sand across Florida Panhandle and Alabama beaches.

It’s never been done on such a massive scale. But doing nothing, experts say, could lead to unprecedented deaths. There are fears the turtles would be coated in oil and poisoned by crude-soaked food.

“This is an extraordinary effort under extraordinary conditions, but if we can save some of the hatchlings, it will be worth it as opposed to losing all of them,” said Chuck Underwood of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“We have a much higher degree of certainty that if we do nothing and we allow these turtles to emerge and go into the Gulf and into the oil … that we could in fact lose most of them, if not all of them,” he added. “There’s a chance of losing a whole generation.”

Dozens of workers are fanned out across the coast marking turtle nests, most of them threatened loggerheads, which nest largely along Florida Panhandle and Alabama beaches.

In about 10 days, they will begin the arduous process of excavating the nests, mostly by hand. The digging must be slow and delicate — aside from making sure the shells don’t crack, the eggs can’t be rolled around or repositioned to protect the embryo inside.

Then the eggs will be carefully placed in specially designed Styrofoam containers, like coolers, along with sand and moisture to mimic the natural nest. The containers will then be trucked about 500 miles east to a temperature-controlled warehouse at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.

There, the eggs will remain until hatchlings emerge, and they will be placed one-by-one on Florida’s east coast, where the turtles can swim oil-free into the Atlantic Ocean.

“There’s a whole lot of unknowns in what we’re doing,” Underwood acknowledged, noting many of the hatchlings could die anyway because of the stressful moving process.

All of the sea turtles that venture into Gulf waters have already suffered because of commercial fishing and habitat loss. Endangered Kemp’s ridleys, which are nesting on beaches in Mexico and Texas, have washed up by the dozens dead along Gulf beaches since the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that has gushed up to 130 million gallons of oil into the sea.

While some have been found oiled, it remains unclear how many of them died because of it. Tests are ongoing. The Kemp’s ridleys aren’t in as immediate of danger because oil hasn’t been washing ashore yet in their nesting places in the western Gulf. But some fear those hatchlings also could eventually make it into the crude.

Threatened loggerheads, which are currently being considered for the added protection of endangered status, also have been found oiled and dead since the spill started, along with leatherbacks and green turtles.

Read the full article, here.

See ‘Not enough money in world’ to pay every spill claim: oil fund czar, Agence France Presse on The Raw Story, June 30, 2010, by AFP, excerpt quoted verbatim:

The prominent US lawyer managing BP’s 20-billion-dollar oil disaster fund said Wednesday not all claimants will be paid, especially some of those seeking compensation for falling houses prices.

“There’s not enough money in the world to pay every single small business that claims injury no matter where or when,” Kenneth Feinberg told the House of Representatives Committee on Small Business.

“You’ve got to decide in a principled way… and work out some definition in that regard,” he said, while stating his determination to “pay every eligible claim.”

“I use that famous example of a restaurant in Boston that says, ‘I can’t get shrimp from Louisiana, and my menu suffers and my business is off.’” Well, no law is going to recognize that claim.”

In another example, Feinberg said the fund was not meant to pay out to all home owners whose properties had declined in value.

See Hurricane Alex shifts oil toward coastline, Agence France Presse on The Raw Story, June 30, 2010, by AFP.

See US fines BP subsidiary $5.2 million for ‘false reporting’, The Raw Story, by Agence France Presse, June 30, 2010 by AFP.

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Oil spill: Sea Turtles
Burned Alive By B.P. Clean Up Crews