On October 6, Sea Alarm hosted a half day training session for a German oil spill expert at its headquarters in Brussels. The expert, Rudolf Gade, who is Head of Unit for surface and coastal water affairs in the federal state of Lower Saxony, was participating in the European Maritime Safety Agency’s (EMSA) EMPOLLEX exchange programme and had indicated an interest in wildlife response.
From 14-17 September an international seminar and workshop were held in Estonia as part of the ENSACO project. This project focuses on the cooperation between Estonia, Finland and Sweden in the areas of shoreline cleanup and wildlife response. Sea Alarm was invited to the event and assisted with the international seminar and a volunteer training on oiled wildlife response.
Sea Alarm’s Saskia Sessions made a presentation during a training course on oiled wildlife rehabilitation in Ankara, Turkey on 3-7 May. This training was for wildlife rehabilitators, scientists, veterinarians and environmental NGOs on techniques and key considerations for hands-on rehabilitation of oiled wildlife. The training course was hosted by BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) pipeline company, as part of their ongoing efforts to improve preparedness for an oil spill from the pipeline.
Sea Alarm was invited by the ProBird group in Germany to attend and lecture on a volunteer course they were organising last April. The course took place in Rastede, in one of the wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centres in the North of Germany, and was attended by ca 20 new volunteers.
During his recent visit to Helsinki, Hugo Nijkamp gave a two hour lecture to more than 30 volunteers of WWF Finland. The volunteers are trained to assist in oil spill incidents in Finland where they play a main role in the shoreline cleanup and wildlife response, as part of a programme which is coordinated by WWF Finland, in close cooperation with Finland’s National Environmental Institute (SYKE) and the Rescue Departments.
Sea Alarm will continue to assist the Netherlands in 2010 with maintaining their national preparedness for oiled wildlife incidents. An important activity scheduled for this year is a tabletop exercise to test the function of the key roles in the plan’s crisis committee, which is responsible for setting up and running the temporary oiled wildlife rehabilitation centre during an incident.
The Weidefeld Tierschutzzentrum (animal welfare centre) recently had the opportunity to send two of its staff (Katrin Umlauf, director and Katharina Stockem) to Wildlife Rescue Centre Ostend (WRCO) to improve their hands on skills in rehabilitation of oiled birds.
Immediately after the 10th Effects of Oil on Wildlife conference, the Estonian Fund for Nature (ELF) organised a volunteer training close to Tallinn. Hugo Nijkamp (Sea Alarm) and Claude Velter (Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre Ostend) were asked to lecture on this training.
In the event of an oil spill incident in the Netherlands, the care of oiled birds is delegated to the Oiled Bird Foundation Netherlands (SON) as part of the integrated oiled bird response plan. Comprised of the five coastal rehabilitation centres in the Netherlands, SON is incorporated in the Netherlands as a Foundation. Sea Alarm regularly attends SON’s bi-annual board meetings as an observer, the last of which was held 29 May at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Ostend.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) has recently announced that it will again make four places available for external participants on the 2-day introductory course on oiled birds course, which will take place in February 2009.
A training exercise is being planned to test the preparedness of Sea Alarm"s Global Response Network. Scheduled to take place in early January 2009, various responders will be called to enquire about their availability, actual mobilisation time and the length…
Sea Alarm has developed training modules for oil spill response experts, which have been integrated into the training courses that OSRL/EARL offers to oil companies.