In anticipation of the decisions by the HELCOM Ministerial Meeting, Sea Alarm has asked Agni Kaldma from Estonia to work on a project to identify the possibility of creating more and closer regional cooperation between leading NGOs in the Baltic countries.
Sea Alarm has been asked to assist the States of Guernsey in reviewing and updating their arrangements for oiled wildlife preparedness and response. As part of the process, an oiled wildlife preparedness training event and stakeholder meeting was held in mid-September in conjunction with an Oil Spill Response (OSRL) shoreline cleanup training course.
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.
In March Wildtierstation Hamburg hosted the European Oiled Wildlife Responders’ meeting, which was attended by Sea Alarm, the RSPCA, ProBird and Wildlife Rescue Centre Ostend. A highlight of the meeting was a tour of the new rehabilitation facility outside of Hamburg, which Wildtierstation Hamburg is in the process of refurbishing.
In March, Sea Alarm (Saskia Sessions, Claude Velter) visited two French wildlife rehabilitation centres, Alca Torda Wildlife Recovery Centre and the Wildlife Care Centre (Le Centre Vétérinaire de la Faune Sauvage et des Ecosystèmes (CVFSE)) at Nantes Atlantic College of Veterinary Medicine, Food Science and Engineering (ONIRIS) to discuss oiled wildlife response in France.
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.