Education

The Oiled Wildlife Care Network (OWCN) and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) – Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR) work collaboratively during California spill responses involving oiled wildlife. The OWCN and OSPR have a shared interest in protecting our State’s natural resources and wildlife and also have a genuine interest and commitment to each respective organizations’ diversity, equity, and inclusion goals.

If you have been keeping up with OWCN’s blog posts, back in January I announced breaking ground on the new San Francisco Bay Oiled Wildlife Care and Education Center’s training center. Now four months later I am happy to announce the near completion of the new training center. With the completion of the new training center, we also say farewell to the old training center and lab modulars. 

Hello OWCN Response Community! We are excited to share that our 2023 training and engagement calendar is live.

Although we’re getting a bit of a later start this year due to many spills to start the New Year, we promise to offer many exciting training and engagement opportunities, including some new offerings. As you view the calendar, please take note that some of our events are in person and some are being held on a virtual platform.

As you may have read in Danene’s blog post last week, Oilapalooza 2022 took place October 22nd-23rd after a year-long covid delay. It was my first Oilapalooza and it is one to be remembered! Day one offered lectures, breakout sessions, and a surprise Escapely Responder Challenge Event, where I was tasked to help run the “vault” challenge. In the vault challenge, teams were given three scenarios where they needed to dress a fellow team member in the proper PPE (personal protective equipment) for the given scenario. To no surprise our participants excelled at this task!

On October 22-23rd the Oiled Wildlife Care Network hosted its biennial conference, Oilapalooza! This two-day conference is hosted by OWCN for its Network of Member Organizations and consists of lectures, interactive activities, and hands-on workshops. This year we held the conference at our home base in Davis, CA. We had over 175 attendees (between our in-person and virtual opportunities) from greater than 35 of OWCN’s Member Organizations, as well as some affiliated agencies and colleagues.

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