About Us – GOWRS

What is an oiled wildlife response?

GOWRS members primary focus is to assist wild animals such as birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles. When oil spills occur, contaminating habitats and ecosystems, wild animals like these are often impacted, resulting in serious harm if not death. A wildlife response is a range of activities that can be deployed to either prevent these animals being impacted in the ﬁrst place, or to rescue and either rehabilitate or euthanise the impacted animals, depending on the severity of their condition.

Wildlife response is often incorrectly thought of as being only about the rescue and rehabilitation of impacted animals, but this is only one of three main strategies used in a wildlife response:

Primary - Keep the oil away from wildlife, by assessing the risks to wildlife from the spill and supporting the actions of oil spill response personnel deploying mitigation measures to protect habitats and sensitive sites such as nesting grounds and haul out beaches
Secondary - Keep the wildlife away from the oil, by using hazing and other techniques to deter animals from approaching the spill and possibly the pre-emptive capture and relocation of some animals
Tertiary - The capture and rehabilitation of oiled animals, coupled with post release monitoring to assess their survival after release. Euthanasia is also an option at this point, depending on the condition of the animal when captured.

Roadmap For Oiled Wildlife Preparedness And Response

Our World-Class Partners

The GOWRS Network comprises 10 organisations who are experienced in managing small to large scale wildlife responses in their own countries and regions and all have many years experience of handling a wide variety of different wild animals.

Aiuká (Brazil), was formed in 2010 and has bases in Praia Grande and Rio das Ostras. It now works throughout South America and has been involved in major incidents in Brazil as well as other countries, such as Peru.

Focus Wildlife International (U.S.A. & Canada), was incorporated in 2004 and works throughout North America and Canada as well as many other countries around the globe.

International Bird Rescue (U.S.A.), was formed in 1971 and has been at the forefront of wildlife preparedness, response, rehabilitation, and release management and maintains wildlife care centres in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as a spill response centre in Alaska. Since then, IBR has become recognised internationally as a world leader in wild bird rehabilitation.

Oiled Wildlife Care Network/UC Davis (OWCN) (U.S.A.), was formed in 1994 by the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Ofﬁce of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR), in response to the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and the American Trader spill in Huntingdon Beach. The OWCN comprises over 40 member organisations, spread throughout the state of California as is recognised as a leader in international spill response.

PRO BIRD (Germany), PRO Bird is a coalition of German animal and environmental protection organizations with the goal of offering and guaranteeing professional rehabilitation of oiled birds in Germany and abroad. The employees of PRO Bird have more than 25 years of experience in this ﬁeld and have already been deployed worldwide.

Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) (U.K.) was formed 200 years ago to address issues related to animal cruelty in cattle markets in London. Since then, the RSPCA has broadened its remit to include providing help to wild animals that have been impacted by oil. The ﬁrst time this was recorded was in the annual report of 1946, but it was their response to the Torrey Canyon disaster in 1967 that prompted the RSPCA to undertake research into how best to help oil impacted animals.

Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) (South Africa), was formed in 1968 to promote the conservation of the African penguin as well as assist them when they were oiled. SANCCOB’s response to the Treasure incident in 2000 involved volunteers from all over the world, with over 19,000 penguins being admitted with 90% being released.

Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research (U.S.A.), was formed in 1976 following a number of oil spills on the Delaware river resulting in the deaths of thousands of animals. TriState now rehabilitates many species of wild birds as well as having a professional oiled wildlife response team.

WILDBASE/Massey University (New Zealand), has been partnered with Maritime New Zealand since 1998 to respond to wildlife impacted by oil spills and other contaminants around New Zealand. Wildbase’s international reputation as a leader in the impacts of oil on wildlife has resulted in the development of a number of programmes of research, especially following the Rena incident in 2011.

Wildlife Rescue Centre Ostend (Belgium) was started by a group of volunteers in the 1980s who had been helping oiled birds that they had found while doing bird counts on the local beaches. The original centre was in the basement of a youth hostel, but a new purpose built centre was opened in 2009. The WRCO, like ProBird, is also a member of EUROWA as well as GOWRS.

Our Vision

To develop and foster a network of like-minded organisations that focus on proactive, collaborative efforts on behalf all key stakeholders, and work to our published standards of good practice. These efforts will result in:
Preventing the oiling of wild animals wherever possible through effective wildlife planning; and
Meeting the requirements of oil-impacted animals when accidents do occur, through a faster, more efﬁcient and uniﬁed response effort.

Our Mission

To work cooperatively to improve preparedness of all stakeholders to enable better wildlife contingency planning and ensure rapid, efﬁcient assistance for oil-affected animals.

History