Second meeting of global wildlife response project takes place in Brazil

The second in-person meeting of ‘JIP20’, an oil-industry-funded project to develop a system for mobilising international oiled wildlife response resources, was held in Brazil in February. Aiuká, one of the participating organisations, hosted the meeting at their oiled wildlife response facility in Praia Grande, near Santos.

Since the first project meeting in Brussels last September, the 11 organisations – all experienced in responding to oiled wildlife incidents both at home and abroad – have been working collaboratively to develop a standard operating procedure for incident notification, assessment and response. The project team has also been developing mutually agreed ‘good practice’ principles for animal care in oiled wildlife incidents.

This OSR-JIP project is aimed at developing foundations for a response system that can be accessed by the oil industry and other stakeholders in the event of an oil spill incident requiring international wildlife response resources (Tier 3 response). The system would enhance the response capability of existing wildlife response organisations through a common operating procedure and shared standards that would allow for unity of effort in the event of an incident requiring the support of multiple organisational resources.

The meeting in Brazil focused on reviewing and refining draft documents and planning the final phase of the project, which ends in December 2016. As such, another principal objective of the Brazil meeting was to develop a roadmap for future development of the system from 2017 onwards, including the implementation of operational readiness.

Attendees included representatives of all project partner organisations (see list below) and Will Gala, Chair of the Industry Advisory Group for the JIP20 project. Plans are underway for a final project meeting in August this year.

JIP20 Project Partners:
•    Aiuká, Brazil
•    Focus Wildlife International, USA & Canada
•    International Bird Rescue, USA
•    Oiled Wildlife Care Network, Wildlife Health Center, UC Davis, USA
•    PRO Bird, Germany
•    RSPCA, UK
•    SANCCOB, South Africa
•    Sea Alarm Foundation, Belgium (Project Coordinator)
•    Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research Inc., USA
•    Wildbase, Massey University, New Zealand
•    Wildlife Rescue Centre Ostend, Belgium