Don't be alarmed. We've managed to pull ourselves through quite a lot of oil spills in our time here Down Under, but we could be doing things better, and it's time to take a fresh look at what's going on in the field of oiled wildlife response. As I understand it anyway.
Wildlife in Australia is managed at a state level, let's start there. The differences in roles and responsibilities, licensing and insuring are vast between states, so vast in fact that that is a whole different blog for another day (I've got my eye on you WA). Suffice to say with regard to the long list of participating agencies, that in the event of an emergency a National Disaster Plan is engaged whereby all the participants take their badges off and work under a united control plan.
Wildlife Response is part of that plan. And like any other part of the plan be it operations, logistics, planning or finance and administration, wildlife response needs ongoing investment in human capital and infrastructure planning. There seems to be a gap here where the oil is dripping down through the cracks.
For the purposes of today's discussion I think it would be pertinent to have a look at New South Wales, insomuch as it has three major shipping ports and this is my seacountry.
Through the organic movements of people and skill levels, and politics, the supporting agencies involved in the response to wildlife emergencies come under the licensing of one government department, but are engaged under various memorandums of understanding with another government department. Go figure. It's fair to say that both departments are genuinely dedicated to the protection and preservation of wildlife in the event of a major oil spill and both departments acknowledge this in their own documentation on the responses to oiled wildlife.
It's not even worth the effort for me to list the names of the documents or departments, such is the turbulent nature of rebranding at every election, that it is almost a full time job for me to keep up with who's who in the zoo myself. I don't get any kind of cordial letter from the government, each time they spend a gazillion dollars on new stationery with new logos ironically, telling me what the new structure is. On that level wildlife care organisations are left to fend for themselves, and there is a very tiny pool of funding to assist with administration for these incorporated associations despite the government being responsible for those administrative pressures anyway. But I digress.
It's fair to say that the membership base for wildlife care organisations can, in itself, be somewhat transient as well. Transience of structure and human resources can be an advantage, streamlining and renewing processes, but it can also lead to a loss of knowledge and information. Herein lies the importance of ongoing training, workshops and seminars to keep everyone, new and old, up to date with it all. This is not happening enough in Australia, and it should not be left up to individual wildlife care agencies to wade through the uncoordinated mess of policies and procedures imposed on them if they want to be prepared to protect their country.
On the bright side, across the country there is a wealth of knowledge, experience and expertise in responding to oiled wildlife, and some of those stalwarts have already made huge efforts at establishing formal networks in the past. There is even some excellent, albeit outdated, procedural guidelines. We don't have to reinvent the wheel, especially with excellent examples of oiled wildlife networks already in existence overseas, you know, like the ones that get called in to New Zealand before Australia is asked for assistance. A saying comes to mind that my Dad used to use, something about being unable to organise a piss-up in a brewery perhaps? A plethora of oiled wildlife response kits and equipment dot the Australian countryside, all maintained by various government and non-government agencies containing enough equipment to deal with the first 100 birds. I find some solace in this. Granted, shipping safety and response preparedness is gaining excellent investment, but I'm still very nervous.
Earlier this month the MV Island Trader ran aground in port at Lord Howe Island. The vessel is the only single-skinned fuel hull vessel allowed into the World Heritage Area. It took 24 hours to put a boom around it. At the Magdalene oil spill in Newcastle last year, pelicans had to be transported over 700 kilometres away because there was no facility close enough to house them.
There were over 7,000 shipping movements through Newcastle in the last twelve months, and the port is expanding. Shipping traffic at Port Kembla increased 19% in a nine month period last year, they are also expanding.
Up to 16,000 penguins live on Montague Island and there are only 200 breeding pairs of Pied Oystercatchers left on the NSW coastline, just two examples of the fragile environment we're dealing with in my seacountry. Wildlife carers want to be better prepared to protect the most vulnerable wildlife, the government has promised training and preparedness, but we still wait and fumble around with our pitiful funding to develop our own.
