Kill the Birds?

A German animal biologist Silvia Gaus says we should be killing the oil-soaked birds in the Gulf of Mexico. Doing so would be less painful in the long run than trying to clean them, she says. Studies and other experts back her up: while cleaning birds and releasing them back into the wild yields short-term results, few of these birds have a chance of surviving. “According to serious studies, the middle-term survival rate of oil-soaked birds is under 1 percent,” Gaus says. “We, therefore, oppose cleaning birds.”