Sascha Wil­son

Founder and pres­i­dent of Pa­pa Bois Con­ser­va­tion Marc de Ver­teuil is con­cerned about the slow­ness of help for the wildlife af­fect­ed by the oil spill along the south-west­ern penin­su­la.He made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he con­firmed that de­spite nu­mer­ous sight­ings of wildlife caked in oil, on­ly one bird was re­port­ed to have been res­cued and treat­ed since the oil spill was first de­tect­ed at Petrotrin's port in the Gulf of Paria last Tues­day. The blan­ket of oil has since spread to beach­es in La Brea, Granville and Ce­dros.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, de Ver­teuil, a T&T Guardian colum­nist, said his last vis­it to af­fect­ed ar­eas in Granville, Bonasse and La Brea was on Mon­day."Clean-up is pro­gress­ing slow­ly," he re­port­ed."There was a dead fish at Bonasse beach. I saw a bird which was half cov­ered in oil, but still fly­ing and walk­ing. It will die un­less it gets help. I saw two dead pel­i­cans in La Brea."He said clean-up crews told him they had def­i­nite­ly seen an­i­mals in dis­tress.

"Peo­ple do­ing the clean­ing up said they saw two oil-slicked caimans at the man­grove by Granville beach."He said there were a lot of peo­ple vol­un­teer­ing help, but "we need to work on putting an ef­fec­tive re­sponse in place."

Dr Car­la Phillips, of the UWI School of Vet­eri­nary Med­i­cine and Aquat­ic An­i­mal Health Unit, said the school was one of three clean­ing cen­tres set up to as­sist wildlife af­fect­ed by the spills. She said En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) of­fi­cials on Fri­day in­formed the school that wildlife might be com­ing in for treat­ment."At that point we es­sen­tial­ly start­ed putting mea­sures in place to have fa­cil­i­ties avail­able to have an­i­mals brought in for treat­ment and care."

How­ev­er, she said there was no ac­com­mo­da­tion for the an­i­mals at the school, so it will treat and clean the an­i­mals and send them to the oth­er two cen­tres for re­cu­per­a­tion. The cen­tres are Wildlife Or­phan­age and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre in Pe­tit Val­ley and the El So­cor­ro Cen­tre for Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion. How­ev­er, she said so far no an­i­mals have been brought in.Lisa Thomas of the Wildlife Or­phan­age, where the res­cued bird has been re­cu­per­at­ing, al­so said no oth­er oil-af­fect­ed an­i­mals had been sent to the cen­tre.

En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh and Petrotrin cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Gillian Fri­day could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.