A week has past since the foul stench of bunker crude left its mark on San Francisco Bay. The oil is being cleaned off beaches and the bay. And more importantly from a wildlife standpoint, birds are STILL being rescued.
Crews are working at this very moment trying to locate and catch any oiled bird in distress. They’re searching the rocky shores of Treasure Island, the muddy flats at low tide in Berkeley, the estuaries of Alameda and the Hoffman Marsh area in Richmond that may contain beached oiled birds. They use cat-like tactics, scouting out locations for night time pickups using beacons of light to sneak up on oiled, hyperthermic birds.
It’s not easy work. The birds are spooked easily and wary of anyone carrying a net. But this is the front lines of wildlife rescue and these dedicated crews from IBRRC/OWCN, Fish & Game and others are doing everything in their power to pickup every distressed bird possible.
Please, if you see a birds that need to be rescued, call 311 in San Francisco; outside the SF, please call (415) 701-2311 or if you can’t get through, submit an online sighting report.
Be patient. The crews have a lot of ground to cover. Some areas may be cordoned off in advance to calm skitish birds, allowing crews to capture the unaware avian victims.
Above all, keep unleashed dogs away from beaches and shorelines containing birds. Without your help, good will and continued public bird sightings, the search will surely drag on.
Check our website for more updates: http://www.ibrrc.org
I’m curious, will IBRRC get involved in the oil spill in Russia that is going on right now too? Having worked in Russia extensively and considering the location of the spill it would seem that your expertise would be valuable.
– a former volunteer with IBBRC, Humboldt Marine Wildlife Care Center
We partner with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) on international spills. Currently we have two response team members, one from Alaska and another from Brazil, on they’re way to this Russian oil spill.
From what I’ve learned, the two are going to access how we might assist in this deadly spill where more than 30,000 birds may have perished.
Your blog is very informative. Would you consider introducing it to Fuelmyblog? I am positive a lot of our users would be interested in reading this blog.
Sylvie
http://www.fuelmyblog.com
I raise rare breed poultry and while that is a long way removed from wild life birds, it sickens me to see these photos of the oil-covered birds.
When will we ever learn?
When I went to the informational meeting in Richmond last Saturday held by the Dept of Fish & Game, Yvonne Addassi, the wildlife branch director, said not to call in if you only see 1 or 2 oiled birds; she said you should only call the hotline if you see 6 or more oiled birds. That doesn’t seem right; do we not have enough people to collect the birds? If we don’t, we should train more.
Russ, I’m glad. As horrible as the spill is in SF I think the one in Russia is, and will have, far more damaging ecological consequences given where it is and the time of year it happened.