Incidents Weblog

The team arrived on site on Saturday 17 November. Lots of birds slicked with oil washed have been ashore. So far, 115 oiled birds, mainly grapes and cots, were collected by volunteers and brought into a very basic camp. Resources and facilities are not available. Under those circumstances, effective rehabilitation is not guaranteed and animal welfare requirements are not fully met. Wildlife responders’ organisations are discussing the best and reasonable response option to deal with the oiled birds. Search and collection efforts have been finalised. WWF is very keen in looking at oiled wildlife response preparedness in the near future.

A team consisting on Hugo Nijkamp (Director, Sea Alarm), Claude Velter (Pro-bird Belgium) and Toni Jokinen (WWF-Finland) are travelling on site tonight to make an assessment together with WWF Russia. While they are there, they will meet with IFAW experts to advise the wildlife response on the Russian side.

Today we came across a short video which shows that clean-up activities are taking place and that workers also find oiled birds on the shore (http://www.greenpeace.org/russia/ru/news/1531282). We have also selected some articles from Lloyd’s List (Lloyds List 13 and 14 Nov.doc) and Reuters (Reuters articles 13 Nov.doc).

It is still hard to get information from local organisations in the area of the incident. All relevant international organisations that we contacted so far seem to be facing this problem, so at the moment the international media are also our main sources of information. A BBC article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7092071.stm) has a quote saying that 30,000 birds would have been affected. In the early stages of an incident it is quite normal that high numbers of birds are said to be oiled, but this is often exaggerated and referring to the size of threatened local populations rather than actually counted numbers. Anyway, pictures in newspapers and footages on the television leave no doubt that birds have been affected and are found dead and alive on the beaches.

Sunday 11, immediately after media reports appeared, the Black Sea information sheet on vulnerable bird populations was updated at the www.oiledwildlife.eu website. Read the information sheet directly by clicking here.

We started this blog November, 13, 12:52. Please wait for further information.