We believe the definition of recovery being used by the Trustee Council is misleading because it is not a practical or accurate measure of the actual state of recovery in the Sound. Furthermore, the recovery of the Prince William Sound ecosystem cannot be measured and defined by the recovery of the few species the Trustees are investigating. The Prince William Sound ecosystem is populated by thousands of other species that were not impacted by the spill, or were impacted but recovered quickly. This fact cannot be ignored. It recognizes that there is very little baseline data from before the spill against which to measure current conditions.
Scientists have little pre-spill information, for instance, about the population of harlequin ducks.
Without baseline data, it is impossible to know how the current population of these birds compares to the pre-spill population. We all witness natural variability when, for example, there is a big winter storm, a heat wave, or an El Ni o event. That's why we can't expect that Prince William Sound will ever be exactly, precisely as it was before the spill. Any definition that uses as an absolute standard the return to pre-spill conditions just isn't realistic. Natural variability has been at work in Prince William Sound throughout the ten years since the spill, and it is extremely difficult to isolate the impacts of the oil spill from the many more significant impacts of natural events that have taken place during that time.