EDMONTON – The rehabilitation of wildlife affected by a recent bitumen leak near Cold Lake continues; and those working on saving the animals are not only pleased with the progress, but believe it’s the first of its kind.
This summer, more than 7,000 barrels of bitumen seeped to the surface at a CNRL site near Cold lake. Wildlife officials have brought nearly 100 animals from that spill site to the Rehabilitation Society in Edmonton. After being cleaned and cared for, more than three quarters of them have been released back into the wild. A typical spill usually sees only 25 to 30 per cent of animals released.
“It really feels great to be able to recover this many animals successfully. It has been a large team effort. Without all the teams involved, we wouldn’t have such a high success rate,” said Wildlife Rehab Consultant Coleen Doucette.
Doucette even goes as far as to call the spill “exceptionally groundbreaking.”
“And a lot of that has to do with CNRL’s willingness to step in and make sure we have everything we need to do the best job that we could possibly do.”
This spill has provided new techniques for cleaning animals coated in bitumen.
“There has been anecdotal kind of info that we got out of spill response, but we’ve really turned a corner on this one and moved into much more scientific approaches to doing this work,” said Doucette.
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“Just being able to see how a change in technique means all of a sudden a bird is eating where it wasn’t eating before…it’s great. It’s why we’re doing it,” added Kim Blomme with the Wildlife Rehabilitation Society of Edmonton. “We want to put them back as if nothing happened in their life.”
Studies will track beavers after they’re released to see how well and if they survive. It’s invaluable data for rescuers, government and industry.
Rehabilitation officials aren’t seeing many more animals coming in from the CNRL spill, which is on a major flight path. However, they are preparing for a possible influx because many birds are beginning to migrate south for the winter.
“We’re much better prepared than we were,” said Blomme. “When Wabamun occurred (in August 2005), we were not prepared for that. Nobody was. I think that that was a wake up call for a lot of people, So we feel a lot more prepared now but there is still a lot more work we need to do.”
With files from Fletcher Kent, Global News
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