EnSaCo activities 2010

Saskia Sessions was invited to the recent ENSACO workshop that took place on 13-14 April in Helsinki, Finland. She was requested to lecture on integrated oiled wildlife response and planning and moderate a Sea Alarm table top exercise on wildlife response planning processes.

EnSaCo is an INTERREG project focusing on shoreline and wildlife response in the central Baltic Sea area and is carried out by partners from Finland, Estonia and Sweden. A main objective of the project is that oiled wildlife response will be integrated into Rescue Services’ oil spill contingency plans. Another issue that EnSaCo will concentrate on is exchanging techniques and current practices of oiled wildlife response, to develop a joint oiled wildlife rehabilitation manual. This will be done by the means of three workshops, each in one of the partner countries. The attendees of the workshops are mainly key individuals from wildlife response organisations and the authorities responsible for coastal cleanup and oil spill response.

One of the activities in the Finnish workshop was the demonstration of the Finnish Mobile Bird Unit, which was set up and activated for the occasion. The washing container was used for a bird washing demonstration. Sea Alarm had enabled Sophie Vanroose from the Wildlife Rescue Centre Ostend to attend the workshop, to assist with the birdwashing demonstration. The programme and report of the April workshop are published on the EnSaCo website.