Yvonne Ba­boolal

En­vi­ron­men­tal­ists, who have been com­plain­ing of Petrotrin's lack of or­gan­ised wildlife re­sponse are, at the same time, see­ing few dead birds in the oil spill on the south-west­ern coast­line.Oth­ers re­port­ed find­ing an oiled bird here and there.The Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo, mo­bilised and wait­ing to re­ha­bil­i­tate oiled wildlife, has got­ten no work, to date.And the Wildlife Or­phan­age and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (WORC) says it has not got­ten as many birds as it ex­pect­ed.

Petrotrin is claim­ing the ef­fect of the spill on wildlife is not sig­nif­i­cant, but en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists are warn­ing of longer-term ef­fects.Marc de Ver­teuil, of Pa­pa Bois Con­ser­va­tion, post­ed on Face­book that he saw an oiled pel­i­can at the Ota­heite fish­ing cen­tre which flew away from him. He said fish­er­men at Ota­heite say they have seen many birds like this.De Ver­teuil said he al­so saw two dead pel­i­cans coat­ed in oil on the beach near Labid­co and at Queen's Beach he saw a Petrotrin staff mem­ber hold­ing an oil-drenched bird.

Stephen Broad­bridge, an­oth­er Pa­pa Bois mem­ber, crit­i­cised Petrotrin for mis­lead­ing the pub­lic and not even hav­ing a wildlife re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion sta­tion set up in the area. But Broad­bridge said the group hard­ly saw any dead birds, some­thing he de­scribed as strange."We didn't see many dead birds. Strange­ly few. For such an oil spill, there has been so few. I'm hop­ing no­body has been col­lect­ing them," Broad­bridge said.

De Ver­teuil said he asked a Petrotrin HSE work­er if they had a re­sponse plan to pro­tect wildlife and he said he didn't know."It's clear to me, there was no planned wildlife re­sponse."No­body was keep­ing count. We'll nev­er know how much wildlife died or how many fish died of tox­ic poi­son­ing."De Ver­teuil said ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Oil Spill Con­tin­gency Plan, oiled wildlife ought to be sent for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion by the Wildlife Sec­tion of the Forestry Di­vi­sion to a reg­is­tered re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre.

He said the on­ly reg­is­tered cen­tre in T&T is WORC in Diego Mar­tin, which is run by Det­ta van Aardt Buch.He re­port­ed that rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Wildlife Sec­tion of the Forestry Di­vi­sion were not present in La Brea.

Petrotrin re­sponds

The T&T Guardian con­tact­ed Shyam Dyal, man­ag­er of Petrotrin's health, safe­ty and the en­vi­ron­ment de­part­ment on the is­sue. He re­fut­ed de Ver­teuil's claim that there was no or­gan­ised wildlife re­sponse."Petrotrin does have an or­gan­ised wildlife re­sponse and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion sys­tem in place. We con­tract­ed an oil wildlife res­cue team," Dyal said.

"Eight pro­fes­sion­als have been on the beach through­out the day and night. If oiled wildlife is res­cued, they are giv­en ini­tial treat­ment and then tak­en for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion to the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions."Dyal said, so far, the team had res­cued four oiled birds, in­clud­ing pel­i­cans."They have been cleaned and re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed and will be re­leased lat­er this week."He said the over­all im­pact of the oil spill on wildlife has not been as sig­nif­i­cant as Petrotrin ex­pect­ed.

He said the com­pa­ny is work­ing with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty to de­vel­op a longer-term mon­i­tor­ing plan, which in­clud­ed watch­ing the ef­fects of the spill on crus­taceans.Petrotrin has not con­duct­ed tests on fish be­ing sold in the mar­ket for any tox­i­c­i­ty, but planned to do so with the health and agri­cul­ture min­istries, he said.

Re­spond­ing to con­cerns that long af­ter the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mex­i­co fish showed mu­ta­tions, Dyal said, "That in­volved mil­lions of bar­rels of oil over two months. This is a short, acute two-week spill."

Det­ta's wildlife or­phan­age

Work­ers at the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo have been mo­bilised and wait­ing to re­ha­bil­i­tate an in­flux of oiled wildlife from La Brea, but to date they have got­ten noth­ing, says Gupte Lutch­me­di­al, pres­i­dent of the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of T&T."We spent $12,000 in equip­ment, kits, clean­ing agents and have re-trained vol­un­teers. The staff is all buoyed up but we don't have any work to do," he told the T&T Guardian.

"No­body would be hap­pi­er than us to get in­volved. That's what we do. Res­cue an­i­mals. But there are no oiled birds, just dead fish and crabs. We can't help dead fish." Lutch­me­di­al said Clax­ton Bay fish­er­folk had called him to re­port they were see­ing oiled birds and he went in a pirogue and toured the coast­line. He said he saw hun­dreds of pel­i­cans and oth­er birds, but they were fly­ing and sit­tings on boats with no oil on them."A team from the zoo vis­it­ed the area over ten times but has found no oiled birds."

Mean­while, van Aardt Buch has been kept busy at the WORC with a small but grow­ing num­ber of oiled birds. She had an oiled pel­i­can who is so well now he is fe­ro­cious and snap­ping at every­body, she said."He is good to go." Sev­en lit­tle sand­pipers were not so lucky. They suf­fo­cat­ed from oil in their nos­trils and all died, she said.Then two oth­er birds came in, one of which, a laugh­ing gull, died of re­nal fail­ure due to oil ab­sorp­tion, ac­cord­ing to the au­top­sy, van Aardt Buch said.

She said she did not get as many birds as she ex­pect­ed and sus­pect­ed many may be fly­ing around in­fect­ed. "We are sim­ply go­ing to have to wait. In the next few weeks, ac­cord­ing to the tox­i­c­i­ty, you may find them sit­ting around some­where."Van Aardt Buch said she felt Petrotrin had been mak­ing every ef­fort to deal with the sit­u­a­tion and could not be fault­ed, es­pe­cial­ly since the spill may not even have been of their mak­ing.