Environmental Issues In John Grisham's The Pelican Brief

John Grisham Paper In John Grisham 's The Pelican Brief, he connects how big oil empires and the environment can affect the life of the brown pelican. The topic is mainly about how environmental issues affect the life of the brown pelican. The life of the pelican is mostly affected by DDT and oil spills. John Grisham most likely brought this topic up in The Pelican Brief because he lived in the Southern United States and oil companies thrived in that region.

The brown pelican was declared endangered in 1970. The location of the brown pelican is what really makes it vulnerable to the environment. “The brown pelican is located along the whole southern border of the United States” (Beckham). This is mainly because most oil rigs are located down in the southern United States. Also, hurricanes can even extirpate habitats along the southern coast. “The brown pelican usually nests in a tree only a couple feet above the high tide on islands very close to southern United States” (Beckham). With the nesting spots only a couple feet above high tide it makes the nests vulnerable to humans messing with their nests. It also can let other animals eat the brown pelican’s eggs. ¨Hunting was a major cause of death in the early twentieth century, and people still hunt adults and collect eggs on Latin American and Caribbean

Many of the brown pelicans have died because the sardines have disappeared” (Williams). The food source for the pelican was destroyed so that was another reason that the environment caused the pelican to become endangered. With the main food source gone the pelicans had to find another source to eat off of. They moved on to the murre chicks. “The pelican began to starve around 2010 and began to eat away the murres population” (Williams). Since the environment destroyed the pelicans food it was time for the pelican to destroy another population. The pelican destroyed the murre