Should oily birds in the gulf be cleaned?

Sharp says he believes many of the cleaned birds will simply not survive after being released back to the wild. That’s because in the wake of the Exxon Valdez accident, he looked at several species of seabirds affected by oil to see how long they lived after being washed and banded with ID tags.

Based on tags that were later found, Sharp says the majority of rehabilitated birds didn’t last long after being released — just days, or weeks.

“When they’re released, they’re still incapacitated,” he says. “They’re still sick.”…

That bothers Michael Fry, a toxicologist who works at the American Bird Conservancy. Some research doesn’t support such a grim view, he says.

“The success at rehabilitation goes all over the map, from like 3 percent of the birds that are brought in, to over 90 percent of the birds that are brought in,” Fry says.