Sea Birds May Soon Need Rehabilitation
Informnauka (Informscience) Agency
Oil spills are a real disaster. They cause worst troubles to sea birds
and animals. A risk of an accident always exists within areas of oil mining
and transporting, especially, in the sea. Beginning the exploitation of
oil and gas fields on the sea shelf, our country is to face inevitable
ecological problems, and it would be helpful to know in advance how to
solve them.
An international conference on the impact of oil industry on wild animals
was held in Hamburg in October of 2003. There, representatives from 17
countries of the world met up. They had many subjects to discuss, since
the Old and New World coasts witnessed hundreds of oil accidents, among
which the oil leaks from tankers Exxon Valdez, Erika, and Prestige were
most disastrous. Our western neighbours have learned from that sad experience
not only to cleanup the spill and assess damages, but also to rescue our
lesser brothers. Oil traps are especially dangerous for birds. The nearest
future of Russian economy is unimaginable without utilizing more fuel
resources, and most of them are mined within the sea shelf. This makes
us wonder, how we should act in case of a similar problems.
The question, whether such problems exist in the north of Russia now,
has been addressed to Natalia Nikolaeva, WWF Russia marine program participant,
who represented our country at the aforementioned conference. She gave
the following comment. By the present time, there have been no places
in the Russian sector of Arctic, where birds needed to be rescued from
such a danger. But it is apparent that such problems will arise. Undoubtedly,
oil will be mined within the northern shelf soon. However, our country
has neither a service for bird rescuing, nor methods of work. Primarily,
foreign handbooks on cleaning birds from oil slick should be translated
into Russian. Then, specialists in bird rehabilitation should be coined.
Ultimately, it is necessary to organize a centre that would promptly send
emergency assistants anywhere.
The first step in saving dirty birds is to catch them and bring to a
cleaning station. There, all parts of bird body are cleaned using sponges,
toothbrushes, and special detergents and carefully rinsed with water.
Oil-poisoned contents of the digestive tract are evacuated using a catheter.
Cleaned birds are placed by groups numbering 10-15 individuals into small
water pools, where they live during rehabilitation period under control
of veterinarians. A complete rehabilitation course can last for up to
a year, until birds moult and acquire a new plumage. Despite the care,
the percentage of healed birds varies from 10% to 70% depending on the
scale of pollution. It is obvious that the labour is very hard and demanding
from a rescuer, who has to be highly professional and passionate about
work.
Weather conditions in northern seas are very severe. Most of the winter
time, there is darkness, storms, and ice. On the
one hand, that increases the risk of accident,
and, on the other hand, that makes it difficult
to perform a rescuing operation. It is practically
impossible to catch a bird, when waves are 2 m
high (a mean wave height most typical in the Barents
Sea). Hence, principally new approaches to bird
rescuing are to be developed in Russia. Oil companies
themselves should be concerned in supporting this
research, because all around the world a company
reputation depends on its ecological compliance.
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