Helcom Response recommends stronger wildlife targets

Following Hugo Nijkamp’s presentation of a joint Sea Alarm and WWF-Finland paper, HELCOM Response has recommended strengthening targets for integrating wildlife response into Baltic area oil spill response planning.

The presentation on the current status of oiled wildlife response preparedness in the Baltic Sea Region was given at the 17th meeting of HELCOM RESPONSE, held 28-30 May in Klaipeda, Lithuania. Both Sea Alarm and WWF-Finland have observer status in HELCOM.
This paper assessed the instruments that have been developed under HELCOM to underpin the region’s preparedness for oiled wildlife incident response as the most advanced in the world.

The HELCOM instruments include the dedicated integrated chapters in the HELCOM Response Manual, the Pollution Report (PolRep) report system (e.g. including dedicated report lines for wildlife incidents), and the binding Recommendation 31/6E “Integrated wildlife response planning in the Baltic Sea area”, which provide guidelines for the development of integrated plans by the contracting parties.

The implementation of this Recommendation however, was slow in the different Baltic Countries, as Sea Alarm and WWF concluded. A decision on the recommendation can be expected from the Ministerial Meeting in October this year.