Lower Saxony wildlife planners visit Dutch colleagues

On December 16 last year a delegation from Lower Saxony paid an informal visit to the Netherlands to discuss planning for oiled wildlife response. The three person German delegation, all working for the Animal Health and Veterinary Task Force, was led by Josef Huesmann, who is responsible for developing an oiled wildlife response plan for Lower Saxony. Its mission was to learn more about the recently agreed Dutch response plan for oiled wildlife and from the representatives from Rijkswaterstaat who developed that plan. After a fruitful meeting in the morning at the Rijkswaterstaat’s premises in Leeuwarden, where details of the plan and its developments were discussed, the delegation spent the afternoon at the Fûgelpits in Moddergat. Here the group could have a look at the set up of this bird rehabilitation centre, which in 2008 successfully rehabilitated several hundreds of oiled ducks from a German mystery spill. The visit was hosted by the Dutch Veterinarian Gerry Dorrestein as a follow up of the 2009 Effects of Oil on Wildlife Conference in Tallinn, where the idea of the visit was born.