A major part of Sea Alarm’s work is assisting coastal governments, NGOs and other agencies in preparedness for an oiled wildlife response. Regular meetings, trainings and exercises of response plans ensure on-going readiness to respond to wildlife threatened by oil spills.
Sea Alarm is continuing its efforts to help Baltic countries to develop their oiled wildlife preparedness by assisting with organisation of two international events in 2012. These events had been proposed as part of a HELCOM Work Programme on Oiled Wildlife Preparedness and Response, submitted by Estonia, Sea Alarm and WWF Finland and adopted in 2010.
Making the most of the fact that many of the leading oiled wildlife response groups were scheduled to attend the IOSC in Portland, Sea Alarm took the opportunity to organise a dedicated meeting of these organisations back to back with the Conference.
Sea Alarm had several opportunities in 2011 to meet face to face with oil industry members of Oil Spill Response () at its shareholder meetings in June and December. Sea Alarm had a small exhibition stand at both of OSRL”s Shareholder meetings, which took place in San Francisco in June and in Southampton in December.
ITOPF is one of Sea Alarm’s key partners and the two organisations have been cooperating for over a decade now, both when responding to oil spills and also in some wildlife preparedness activities. A presentation day was held at ITOPF’s offices in London in October, to strengthen this relationship and bring some of ITOPF’s newer staff up to speed with Sea Alarm’s work.
Hugo Nijkamp and Saskia Sessions travelled to the RSPCA’s Headquarters in West Sussex, UK for a meeting in November last year.
On Saturday April 16 Sea Alarm hosted the board meeting of the Dutch national oiled bird rehabilitation network (SON – Stichting Olievogels Nederland) at its offices in Brussels.
Sea Alarm was invited to make a presentation at a recent meeting of the European Community Shipowners Association (Safety and Environment Committee) in Brussels.
Sea Alarm hosted the 3rd meeting of key European wildlife response organisations at its office in Brussels in April. The group, which includes Sea Alarm, the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Animals (RSPCA), the Ostend Wildlife Rescue Centre (Belgium), and ProBird (Germany), meets twice a year to evaluate and further optimise their joint international response preparedness.
Sea Alarm was invited to make a presentation at the IPIECA Oil Spill Working Group meeting in London on 11 November. IPIECA is the global oil and gas industry’s association for environmental and social issues and its Oil Spill Working Group, created in 1987 is a key international industry forum working on improving oil spill contingency planning and response worldwide on behalf of its members. Sea Alarm is recognised as a Partner Organisation of IPIECA.
A second 2010 HELCOM RESPONSE meeting was held 13-15 October in St. Petersburg, Russia. Sea Alarm did not attend the meeting, but prepared a proposal for a working programme for oiled wildlife response preparedness together with WWF-Finland and Estonia. The proposal was presented to the meeting by Estonia and WWF-Finland and, after some discussion and suggestions for modification, was adopted.
Sea Alarm organised a second meeting with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Wildlife Rescue Centre Ostend and ProBird Germany, to discuss wildlife response issues, especially the rehabilitation of oiled birds. The meeting took place in September at Mallydams Wood, one of RSPCA’s wildlife hospitals, and was attended by various people from the different key organisations mentioned. An earlier meeting in April 2010 demonstrated that it is useful to have regular exchanges of the details of the oiled bird rehabilitation protocols that each of the organisations uses.