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GUEST: Gary Langham, Director of Bird Conservation for Conservation for Audubon, California

Federal investigators have launched a criminal probe into the cause of last week’s Bay Bridge oil spill in San Francisco. A 900 foot tanker crashed and spilled 58,000 thousand gallons of oil last Wednesday in what has been the worst accident of its kind to hit the bay in decades. Critics are questioning why he Coast Guard first stated that only a few hundred gallons of oil had seeped out of the massive tanker. Preliminary investigations suggest human error, not mechanical failure, as the cause of the crash. As clean-up efforts have intensified, some environmentalists are saying that the impact will last for decades. In the short term, beaches have been closed, wildlife has been killed and the commercial crabbing season has been devastated. The Coast Guard has reported that more than 12,200 gallons of oil have been cleaned up while hundreds oil-fouled birds have been recovered. Some 200 birds have been found dead. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared the spill a state of emergency.

For more information, visit www.ca.audubon.org/