OWCN Blog

Today marks 15 years from when the container vessel, M/V Cosco Busan, allided with the San Francisco Bay bridge, setting into motion both a massive clean-up and wildlife effort, but also leading to transformative prevention actions both in California as well as the US.

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.

Most of us enjoy a day on or near the water, and images of soft waves, turquoise blue water, white sand, fresh air, and cool breezes instantly flood our minds. There is an endless number of water activities that come to mind: surfing, sailing, fishing, snorkeling, diving, swimming, canoeing, kayaking, water skiing, just to name a few. For some of us, in our day-to-day jobs we can also find ourselves on the water – in my case, when looking for oiled wildlife during spill events, or when doing research.

OWCN’s Management Team members, along with many network organization members, attended the Effects of Oil on Wildlife (EOW) Conference in Long Beach, CA September 26th-30th. This conference has occurred every few years since its inception in 1982 and is “the only global meeting focusing on the planning, response, rehabilitation, and research aspects of oil spills and their impacts to wildlife”.

As we have increasingly seen over the past decade, the best oiled wildlife responders are those that concentrate not only on the health of the animals in their care, but also on their own mental and physical health. On this, World Mental Health Day, we would like to share a post from our partners, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, illustrating this and giving tips on prioritizing your own mental health.

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza has reached California and is affecting wildlife and domestic poultry. This virus is highly infectious and can cause significant mortality events amongst wild birds and poultry. Because of the serious implications of an HPAI outbreak, the OWCN is implementing additional biosecurity measures across our operations to protect our patients, our responders, and our member organizations.

For those who may have missed OWCN’s previous blog about me joining OWCN, I would like to briefly introduce/ re-introduce myself. I am Danny Vickers; I am OWCN’s most recent hire (August 21st marked two months!) and have replaced Tim (recently retired) as the new Care Facilities Specialist. I am a California native originally from Placer County. My educational background is in natural and biological sciences, wildlife management and animal science. I hold a bachelor’s degree from UC Davis in Animal Science where I concentrated my studies in Livestock Management.

Did you know the OWCN is hiring a Readiness Specialist? Thinking about applying, but you’re not exactly sure what a Readiness Specialist does? Well, I am here to talk you into it (okay not really, just provide some insight). As the Readiness Coordinator for Care Operations you and I would be working very closely together. I’ve been in this role for a little over four years – time flies! I love my job and am honored to work for the Oiled Wildlife Care Network.

The moment all you field folks have been waiting for has finally arrived. We have updated the Wildlife Recovery (WR) App after last year’s Pipeline Spill in Huntington Beach, and the newest version is now available to download on the App Store! So, a huge THANK YOU to everyone who provided feedback on the app after that spill. You all really helped flush out some issues, provided recommendations on ways to improve it, and helped pave the way for what I believe is the best version yet.

I recently (well, this past March) had my one year anniversary with OWCN. As I thought about my goals for years two and beyond, I took the opportunity to reflect on all the fun and rewarding things I’ve done over the last year. I’m often asked, “what do you do as an oil spill response veterinarian?” So, without further ado, I figured I’d share with you all my year(ish) in review.

Spill response, that’s what we do! So, when we had to cancel the 2021 Oilapalooza Conference due to the Pipeline P00547 incident we wanted to find a unique way to offer some of the exciting topics we had planned for the conference to our Network. That brought us to the creation of the 2022 OWCN Lecture Series. And, just like that, those 6 months have passed, and we’ve presented the entire Lecture Series!