The Sonat Goins Spill
How response to an oil spill in a national forest helped recover an endangered woodpecker
On August 8, 1997, Sonat Exploration Company was conducting exploratory drilling at Well No. 7 on land known as the Goins Tract near Cravens in Vernon Parish, Louisiana. At about 11:30 AM, the well blew out and began spewing oil, which continued for seven days until it was finally brought under control. By the time it was all over, the spill had released hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil and contaminated salt water, drilling mud, tailings, and natural gas. Natural gas liquids and crude oil mist was transported downwind into the nearby Kisatchie National Forest (as seen in the background aerial photo). The spill killed understory vegetation and hardwood trees and flowed into Little Sixmile Creek west of the well. Almost 121 acres of soils, sediments, surface water, and vegetation were ultimately impacted.
Structures and trees covered with oil mist from the August 8, 1997 Sonat Exploration Company well blowout.
Habitat oiled by the August 8, 1997 Sonat Exploration Company well blowout.
Habitat oiled by the August 8, 1997 Sonat Exploration Company well blowout.
A Prized National Forest Damaged
Most of Louisiana was historically covered with forests. The booming lumber business that emerged in the early 20th century, however, quickly depleted supplies. The Kisatchie National Forest, formally designated in 1930, derives its name from the tribe of Kichai Indians of the Caddoan Confederacy, who called themselves "Kisatchie". This forest now supports outdoor recreation such as hunting, fishing, bird watching, and mountain biking. Its habitats, most notably its longleaf pine ecosystem, supports a myriad of biological and ecological services.
The longleaf pine ecosystem, prized in the Kisatchie, once dominated 92 million acres from Virginia to Florida and from the east coast to Texas (approximately 2/3 of the southeastern U.S.). Longleaf pine forests cover a variety of different habitat types, and were shaped and maintained by a frequent fire regime that eliminates competition from hardwoods and other southern pines. These forests represent some of the world's most biologically diverse ecosystems in North America, home to nearly 600 plant and animal species including 29 threatened and endangered species. Fox squirrels, bobwhite quail, wild turkey, whitetail deer, countless varieties of songbirds, and native butterflies flourish in longleaf pine forests. Reptiles and amphibians are frequent inhabitants, many found nowhere else. The ecosystem also provides ideal habitat for orchids and endemic pitcher plants, as well as the federally-threatened eastern indigo snake, the federally-threatened gopher tortoise, and the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.
Longleaf map provided by americaslongleaf.org/. *Red-cockaded woodpecker historic range adapted from Butler, M. J. 2001. Red-cockaded woodpecker foraging habitat requirements on industrial forests in southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana. M.S. Thesis. University of Arkansas at Monticello.
Longleaf pine disappeared from much of its original range because of early (1700's) European settlement, widespread commercial timber harvesting, and the naval stores/turpentine industry (1800's). Early to mid-1900 commercial tree farming, urbanization and agriculture contributed to further declines, reducing the once far-spread species to a mere 4.2 million acres. Fullerton, Louisiana, within what is now the boundaries of Kisatchie National Forest, was once the site of the largest sawmill town west of the Mississippi River. The town grew to an estimated population of 5,000 and existed from 1907-1927.
Dried lumber ready to be moved to storage. Photo courtesy of USDA Forest Service.
Planer lumber mill, Gul LBN Company, Fullerton, LA. Photo courtesy of USDA Forest Service.
Like the Fullerton mill, much of the longleaf pine ecosystem eventually disappeared from this area. The disappearance of longleaf pine negatively affected wildlife habitat, fire resiliency and habitat diversity across the landscape. Because of the wide diversity of special habitats and species the longleaf pine ecosystem supports, interest from federal, state and private entities has grown since 2000 in longleaf pine ecosystem restoration. Unbeknownst to company workers and federal employees, August 8, 1997 would be when the Sonat Exploration Company's oil spill, the Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration program, longleaf pine restoration, and efforts to recover the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker would collide.
Endangered Woodpeckers
At about 7 inches long, the red-cockaded woodpecker (affectionately known as the RCW) is approximately the size of the common cardinal. Its back is barred with black and white horizontal stripes, with its most distinguishing feature a black cap and nape that encircle large white cheek patches. Rarely visible except during the breeding season, the male has a small red streak, called a cockade, on each side of its black cap. The RCW's name came into use during the early 1800's when "cockade" was also regularly used to refer to a ribbon or other ornament worn on a hat.
RCWs were once common throughout the longleaf pine ecosystem in the southeastern U.S. RCW family units, or "groups", inhabited the open pine forests of the southeast from New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia to Florida, west to Texas and north to portions of Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky. John James Audubon reported in the early 1900s that the RCW was found "abundantly" in the pine forests of the southeastern United States: the original population has been estimated at over 1.5 million. Today that estimate is closer to 15,000, representing less than 1% of the woodpecker's population at the time of European settlement.
Red cockaded Woodpecker
The RCW plays a vital role in the intricate web of life of the southern pine forests. Preferring mature, 80+ year-old longleaf pine, the RCW is the only woodpecker which excavates cavities exclusively in living pine trees. Doing so provides them with workable wood, but also allows them to use the sap the living tree produces to protect their cavity from predators such as snakes. Cavity excavation can take up to six years. The aggregate of local cavity trees (called a cluster) may include 1 to 20 or more cavity trees on 3 to 60 acres. At least 27 species of vertebrates are known to use RCW cavities for roosting or nesting, including birds, snakes, lizards, squirrels and frogs. Many of these species, such as wood ducks, only use cavities that have been abandoned by RCWs. However, active RCW cavities are a valued resource for many species and competition occurs for their use. Southern flying squirrels, red bellied woodpeckers, redheaded woodpeckers, eastern bluebirds, brown-headed nuthatches, tufted titmouse and great crested flycatchers compete for cavities that RCWs could also otherwise still use. Because the cavity building service they provide contributes to the species richness of the forest, biologists have conferred RCWs a special "keystone" species status. This alone would be enough to protect them. The fact that they almost disappeared from the landscape made focus on protection and recovery of the species and the habitat on which it relies extraordinarily important.
The RCW was first listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Conservation Act of 1969, the precursor to the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Protections were subsequently carried over with the passage of the ESA in 1973. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) now administers recovery and consultation programs for the RCW in accordance with the ESA and works to ensure consistent application of recovery and conservation policies and programs among and between federal, state, and private lands in the Southeast. The FWS promotes conservation, restoration, and ecologically sound management of the Southeast's longleaf pine ecosystem, the ecosystem upon which RCW recovery depends, via full implementation of the RCW recovery plan.
The NRDAR Program
When hazardous substances such as the product spilled from the Sonat well enter the environment, fish, wildlife, and other natural resources can be injured. Following the Oil Pollution Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, states, tribes, and federal agencies may act as "trustees" for the public in bringing claims against the polluting entity for natural resource injuries. Trustees seek to identify and assess the resources that were injured and then to restore, replace or acquire the equivalent of the injured resources. The Department of the Interior’s Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration (NRDAR) program uses these laws to restore natural resources injured by oil spills or the release of hazardous substances.
In response to the Sonat spill, company and government responders dammed Little Sixmile Creek, constructed a diversion dike to direct accumulated fluids, cut trees to facilitate response activities, recovered and removed 13,000 barrels of oil and 600,000 barrels of contaminated brine, and conducted an in-situ burn in parts of the forest (as seen in the background photo), all in the name of removing residual petroleum to prevent ongoing harm. The NRDAR trustees, in this case the FWS, USDA Forest Service (Forest Service), and Louisiana agencies, subsequently worked with Sonat to determine the extent and type of damage caused by their spill and to conduct restoration planning. Emergency restoration was done from November - December 1998, consisting of in-situ burns of the impacted areas to remove a residual layer of oil. In January and February 1999 an assessment was done to test the soil for remaining oil and determine the potential of the area to be revegetated. The trustees ultimately determined that both primary restoration (actions taken to accelerate return of injured natural resources and services to pre-spill condition) and compensatory restoration (restoration needed to address interim losses to habitats and species pending recovery to baseline) would be required.
Emergency clean-up activities following the 1997 Sonat Exploration Company well blowout.
Emergency clean-up activities following the 1997 Sonat Exploration Company well blowout.
Emergency clean-up activities following the 1997 Sonat Exploration Company well blowout.
Starting in the summer of 1999 the trustees and Sonat began meeting to discuss restoration. The trustees published a draft restoration plan for public comment in 2005 and a final Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan (DARP) in 2006, which articulated the damage caused by the spill, the trustees' restoration planning process, and the restoration they planned to implement to compensate the public for losses to natural resources. Finally, in July of 2007 the trustees published the Restoration Implementation and Monitoring Plan: Red-Cockaded Woodpecker Habitat Enhancement and Management Compensatory Restoration Project (RIMP), and the El Paso E&P Company (formerly the Sonat Exploration Company) and federal trustees signed a settlement agreement to resolve natural resource damages, paving the way for restoration implementation.
Restoration Implementation and the RCW
The trustees’ preferred restoration alternative outlined in the DARP included removing the remaining damaged trees from 18.6 of the affected acres to minimize Southern Pine Beetle hazard, prescribed burns to enhance habitat, and reforesting the area with native species. In addition, acknowledging the importance of longleaf pine habitat and RCW recovery, the trustees decided to use settlement funds to enhance 299.42 acres of RCW habitat within the Kisatchie National Forest as the preferred compensatory restoration alternative. The trustees incorporated RCW biology, habitat requirements, and species recovery plans into their preferred NRDAR alternative. Restoration outlined by the RIMP included both activities to enhance RCW habitat and activities to actively produce RCW chicks, helping bolster the local population both in the short term and long run.
The RIMP identified three practices used in the maintenance of high-quality RCW habitat: bush-hogging (using heaving duty mowers) and prescribed burning to manage ground-level vegetation and timber thinning to support forest health. The RIMP also directed the installation of 120 RCW nest cavity inserts, which served as fresh cavities in which RCWs could immediately nest and raise chicks. The Forest Service, the federal trustee responsible for managing the Kisatchie National Forest, led implementation of the RIMP from 2009 to 2013.
Management of RCW habitat directed by the RIMP, Vernon Unit, Kisatchie National Forest. Photos courtesy USDA Forest Service.
Restoration Success: Helping Bring the RCW Back from the Brink
Ultimately, restoration work led by the Forest Service under the RIMP led to enhancement of over 300 acres of longleaf pine habitat across the Vernon Unit of the Kisatchie National Forest. NRDA settlement funds remained following completion of the RIMP's Red Cockaded Woodpecker Habitat Enhancement and Management Compensatory Restoration Project, which the Forest Service used to continue enhancement and management work in target areas on both the Vernon Unit and nearby Evangeline Unit in accordance with the FWS 2003 RCW recovery plan and the Kisatchie National Forest's 1999 Land and Resource Management Plan Revision. By September 2018 when the project ended, project managers had completed enhancement within 978 acres of RCW habitat and installed 230 RCW nest cavity inserts, ultimately documenting 225 RCW eggs and 109 fledglings in project areas, a significant number of new RCWs that otherwise may not have existed. Habitat enhancements and nest inserts remained onsite after project monitoring ended, supporting additional RCW breeding and benefitting the multitude of other wildlife that rely on RCWs and this unique ecosystem.
Interact with this map to see data related to the spill location (red flag) and locations of red-cockaded woodpecker enhancement plots (green birds). Zoom in using the plus/minus buttons, click and drag to move the map, and click on the mapped locations to reveal more information.
Red-cockaded woodpecker eggs and chicks produced by the Sonat Well Number 7 Blowout Oil Spill NRDAR settlement. Photos courtesy USDA Forest Service.
In October 2018 the trustees determined that restoration to compensate the public from the 1997 Sonat Goins spill was complete. Thanks to restoration such as that provided by the Department of the Interior’s and Department of Agriculture's Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration programs, the RCW has increased in number range-wide and can now be found in 11 states (AL, AR, FL, GA, LA, NC, MS, OK, SC, VA, and TX) on federal, state and private lands.
The federal government's Authorized Official for the NRDAR case approved it's official closure in July 2020. Coincidentally, on October 8, 2020 the FWS proposed to downgrade the red-cockaded woodpecker from endangered to threatened status under the ESA. Due to the conservation efforts of diverse stakeholders across its range and subsequent growth in a majority of its local populations, the FWS proposed it was no longer in danger of extinction. The Sonat Goins spill and the restoration the NRDAR trustees effected in response surely contributed to this success.
Current range of the red-cockaded woodpecker ( U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service ) and population trends, 1966-2019 (inset; average population percent change and 95% confidence interval, courtesy USGS ).
In partnership with affected state, tribal and federal trustee agencies, the Department of the Interior NRDAR Program conducts damage assessment and implements associated restoration owed to the public for losses caused by releases of contamination that injure natural resources. Because of the success of the program and hard work of its practitioners in the days and years following August 8, 1997, the Sonat Goins Spill, the Department of the Interior’s NRDAR program and the recovery of the longleaf pine ecosystem and the RCW will be forever intertwined.
The Natural Resource Trustees for the Sonat Well Number 7 Blowout Oil Spill Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration case included the Department of the Interior (represented by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service); Department of Agriculture (represented by the USDA Forest Service); and the state of Louisiana (represented by the LA Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office, LA Dept. of Environmental Quality, and LA Department of Wildlife and Fisheries)
Story map created by Krishna Madhav (United States Geological Survey) and Brian Spears (United States Fish and Wildlife Service)
