"Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie ... " -- Yes, It's a Bakken Story

Updates

November 10, 2013: I forget how this all played out, but I believe civil penalties were assessed for the death of two ducks that landed in a pool of water on a drilling bad in North Dakota. There was early talk that oil company employees and/or executives could be criminally charged. Now, today, the Los Angeles Times is reporting two California condors were found dead in water tanks owned by Kern County:

The deaths of two California condors found last month in water tanks used by Kern County firefighters have state wildlife officials working on a way to keep the large, endangered birds out of the tanks. 

It will be interesting to see what charges are brought against Kern County officials and the fire department. I'm not holding my breath.
 

Original Post

On the front page with a huge headline in today's local paper: "Oil Companies Plead Not Guilty in ND Bird Deaths." NOT GUILTY, they plead.

I won't read much of the article, maybe scan some of it.

The size of the headline, the length of the story, and the placement on the front page suggests the local paper and/or its readers consider this story as interesting or as important as anything else that has ever been covered in the newspaper, including murders in Williston (very rare, knock on wood), mulitple vehicle fatalities (almost as rare, knock on wood again), oil rig mishaps (rare), loss of limbs and lives in the Afghanistan and Iraqi war (not so rare), and so forth.

Before continuing, it should be noted that wind turbine operators and developers are immune from whooping crane deaths caused by wind turbines. I could be wrong on that. The law may not yet be written; it still may be under discussion by Fish and Wildlife folks. I honestly can't remember where that stands, but the Federal government is pushing for open season on whooping cranes by the wind energy industry. I assume if the decision has not yet been made, the sticking points are what to do with the carcasses. If not too badly damaged, they might look nice in a natural history museum.

So the deaths of these 26 birds, I think it was (again, I skimmed the article, so don't know the details, but I think I recall that it was 26 migratory birds -- I assume ducks of some sort) is the story.

But I digress. Whether you have deep thoughts about this story one way or the other (and I don't), or are completely indifferent about it, matters not (at least to me). The story here is not that oil companies are being charged with killing 26 migratory birds through an act of omission (or perhaps commission). The story is that this is the BIG story of the day, perhaps the year, here in western North Dakota.

That should give newbies an idea how utterly safe and wonderful the state of North Dakota is. Twenty-six migratory birds died during the state's worse winter/spring in decades -- I don't think they all died at once or in the same oil-well-waste pond, though they might have. I assume it occured over time and in different waste ponds. I'm impressed the oil industry does as well as it does protecting wildlife if this is the extent of documented wildlife loss since the boom began in 2007. Oh, yes, I'm sure there are additional cases, both documented and undocumented, but be that as it may.

I honestly don't think the story of the eleven HUMAN deaths on the Gulf rig that exploded in 2010 got the attention in the local papers that this story of 26 migratory birds is going to get.

I only saw one sentence in the article as I flipped the paper over to see what other "news" was being covered today: at least one line of defense by the oil companies will be that the evidence was gathered illegally.

I assume the case will be covered live on television. I am hoping for some great sound bites that will end up on the Jay Leno show to compete with such classics as "if it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

"Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie ... "