Oiled Wildlife

Greetings to the OWCN Network. My name is Frankie Lill, to some of you I am a familiar face, and to most I am the newest member of the OWCN Management Team! I will be working with Danene as a Wildlife Planning Specialist.  Although I am new to Davis and the OWCN MGMT Team, I have served as an OWCN volunteer for the last several years. Since then, I have been activated once for an oil spill, Pipeline 00547, and I have participated in recent UMEs out of LA, including a few grebe incidents, the Pelicans and the Elegant Tern response which was quite literally in the Aquarium’s Harbor.

As many of you are aware, Scott Buhl migrated from the OWCN to the California Veterinary Emergency Team last year. Given the numerous spill responses the OWCN was activated for over the winter it’s taken us a little bit of extra time to replace that position. 

That said, we are thrilled to announce the newest member of the OWCN Management Team, Wildlife Planning Specialist, Frankie Lill.

Maybe you have gone birding and seen a bird with a band on it, or been strolling the beach in southern California and seen a banded Snowy Plover? If so, consider yourself lucky! Seeing a banded bird (especially if you don’t know where to look) is a bit of a rare sight, even though the USGS’s Bird Banding Lab (BBL) works around the clock to help manage and keep track of all the bands that researchers use as well as all the band “returns” that get reported back to the BBL when birds with bands are spotted.

I can’t believe January is almost over. Since November, the OWCN has been busy responding to at least one oiled wildlife event at a time.

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.

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.

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!