Florida Audubon is helping to lead a statewide campaign under the banner “Protect Florida’s Beaches.”  Policy advocates have debated oil company lobbyists, appeared in countless news events and stories and provided compelling testimony before legislative committees.

Audubon’s leadership in this important debate is all the more important given a news story that just ran in a Louisiana paper.  The story reports that National Audubon Society is cooperating with neighbors of its Rainey Sanctuary to evaluate safer ways to extract natural gas in coastal Louisiana.  The story accurately reflects Audubon’s commitment to evaluating the impact of additional energy development in an area where such activity has already taken place and is likely to continue.  However, partial or distorted excerpts that are already being circulated by l drilling proponents to may lead to questions.  How, they ask, can you oppose drilling along Florida’s beaches and in the Arctic if you don’t oppose it along the Louisiana coast?

Audubon expects the story that appeared in the New Orleans Times-Picayune to be picked up by blogs on both the right and the left.  And no doubt they will use the claimed inconsistency to try to shout down Audubon’s work to safeguard and protect Florida’s beaches, coastal habitats, and the birds and wildlife they support.

Let’s be honest with ourselves.  We live in the age of oil and gas.  Use of fossil fuels will someday be eclipsed by clean energy.  But until that time we must work to keep oil and gas exploration away from environmentally sensitive areas while working hard to encourage Americans to choose alternatives and conservation.  National Audubon Society and Audubon of Florida have and will continue to vigorously oppose offshore and nearshore oil drilling along Florida’s coast and in other areas, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. These natural environments are simply too sensitive to put at risk. Florida’s beaches and coastal habitats, its undisturbed waters, and the diversity of birds and wildlife it supports, are both ecologically rich and economically vibrant. Florida’s coastal economy generates up to $562 billion per year and tourism, around $65 million annually, both of which will grow if we do not allow drilling to put them at risk.

Audubon also supports policies that promote and create a quick transition to clean renewable energy and energy independence. At the same time, we recognize that some use of natural gas, the cleanest fossil fuel option, may be an important part of our economy as we transition to cleaner energy sources. And so, we work to ensure that development occurs in the least damaging places using the least damaging methods; not in pristine and ecologically and economically rich areas such as Florida’s coastal waters.

Energy extraction did occur for many years at the Paul J. Rainey Sanctuary in coastal Louisiana, which was donated to Audubon in 1924.  Some subsurface mineral rights were controlled by others and the property was opened to oil and gas exploration in the 1940s.  Extraction continued there until the leases expired in 1999. Since Audubon does not control the mineral rights for all of the property, or the neighbors, future extraction cannot be precluded.

Florida beaches and coastal waters have been protected by statutory bans on oil and gas drilling for more than two decades. That is one of the reasons our signature coastal landscapes are so remarkably rich ecologically and economically. Now is an excellent opportunity to reaffirm and work hard to maintain these protections.

As the critics take aim at Audubon over the next few days, recall these famous words by Teddy Roosevelt, “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…”    Were we not in the arena using different, but appropriate approaches to protecting the resources of both Louisiana and Florida, there would be no story. It is because we fight that misguided or intentionally overstated suggestions of irony may appear.

For more information and to join in protecting Florida’s remarkable beaches, visit: http://protectfloridasbeaches.org.

For more information on issues related to the Rainey sanctuary in Louisiana, visit: http://www.audubon.org.