SPILL DOOMS SOUND ANIMALS
COUNTING BODIES IS ALL ANYONE CAN DO, STATE WILDLIFE OFFICIAL SAYS

By CRAIG MEDRED
Daily News outdoors editor

ANCHORAGE- As the grimy tentacles of an 11 million gallon oil spill spread west from Valdez to choke and drown the wildlife of primordial Prince William Sound on Monday, wouldbe rescuers stood powerless to act.

A body count of dead animals is about all that anyone can hope to do, said Jon Lyman, a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The wilderness that has made the Sound so rich and unique now stands as a major barrier to efforts to rescue the thousands of birds, sea otters, fish and other creatures expected to be caught in North America's largest oil spill.

Fewer than than 100 animals are known to be dead so far, but thousands are expected to die.

Officials in the state of Washington estimated that 10,000 birds perished there after a barge spilled 231,000 gallons of bunker oil off that state's southwest coast in late 1988.

Bunker oil is gooier than the North Slope crude that spilled in Prince William Sound, but the Washington spill was only about onefiftieth the size of the spill near Valdez.

In Washington, rescuers were able to mobilize thousands of volunteers who could easily get to the scene to help. That will not be the case in the Sound.

"There's just a lot of problems out there," said Pam Bergman, head of the regional response team for the Department of the Interior.

Problems cited by Bergman and others include:

* A coastline so remote that rescuers are afraid to send out volunteers for fear they might not be equipped or prepared for wilderness survival.

* Beaches so rugged that in many places it is impossible to land a boat, let alone chase down and capture oilcoated birds or wildlife.

* Distances to aid facilities so great that animals captured on the beach would likely die in captivity waiting to be taken to a hospital.

* And wild animals so large and powerful that rescuers could be seriously injured.

"It's not good," Bergman said.

And as of Monday evening, it was getting worse. Strong, northwest winds were pushing the oil spill farther and farther from the rescue coordination center at Valdez.

The contamination was stretching far beyond the reach of would be animal rescuers, Bergman said, and the winds had made it impossible to retrieve oil soaked wildlife.

"It was tough just flying this morning," said Joe Sautner of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. "There is not much that can be done now . . . under these conditions."

Sautner reported surf pounding oil onto beaches at a half dozen islands. The farthest of those was 75 miles by airplane from Valdez.

The spill is already threatening thousands of animals and more are arriving daily as northward migrations of birds, sea mammals and fish begin.

Bergman said some thought had been given to setting up an animal rescue facility closer to that westward spreading oil, but there is simply no place to put such a facility.

There are no communities in the southwest portion of the Sound. It is an area of rocky reefs and tree studded islands, of wilderness and wildlife. It is a land few people call home.

"There are few good beaches in many of the areas," Bergman said. "A lot of the beaches that are there are small."

None of them would work well for catching birds, she said, and catching birds from boats is out for safety reasons.

"Nobody wants anybody getting hurt capturing wildlife," she said.

Bergman has recent experience in bird rescues. She was in Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians only a few weeks ago trying to catch oil fouled sea birds.

At Dutch Harbor, she said, volunteers were able to drive to a long, sandy beach perfect for captures. They still only caught 28 birds, and they were able to save only eight.

"It's difficult, even in a good situation," Bergman said.

"It's real hard to sneak up on (birds)," she said. "You end up racing the birds down the beach with a net trying to catch them. Once you capture an oiled bird, you can't leave it in a box for 12 hours."

The bird must go almost immediately to a rehabilitation center where it can be fed, de oiled and dried. That is its only hope. And nobody has come up with a good way to get oiled birds from the western Sound to a facility in any community.

"Could you airlift birds out?" Bergman asked. "Is that the reasonable and best use of helicopters? There are a finite number of helicopters available here. As far as I know, no one is talking about doing that."

Sea otters present even bigger problems, she added. People need a lot of training and a fair amount of experience to learn how to handle them safely.

"They're a potential danger," she said. "They look sweet and cuddly and wonderful, but they got sharp teeth and claws."

A lot of people want to help. Bergman said she's been talking to groups organizing volunteers. But rescue coordinators aren't sure what volunteers could do.

They might be able to help, but they might also do harm.

"You don't want a bunch of these boats going out there and getting oily and spreading oil elsewhere," Bergman said.

A bird and animal cleanup after the Washington spill didn't really get going for a week or more and then lasted about six weeks.

Two thousand volunteers worked the beaches of Washington, according to Pam Miller, ocean issues coordinator for the Washington State Department of Ecology. They found 8,000 dead birds, and 3,000 oiled birds that were still alive. Only 1,000 of the oiled birds ever made it back to the wild, she added.

Murres, a cousin of the puffin, seemed to have the best chances of survival, Miller said. Other birds, among them loons, often died from shock as soon as they were picked up.

Ken Pritchard, an activist with Adopt A Beach, a non profit organization involved in Washington state oil cleanups, said any rescue effort requires a lot of planning.

Rescuers must find somewhere to set up a roomy bird hospital, he said. The facility has to have lots of hot water and access to volunteers. Few such sites are available anywhere in Alaska.

Pritchard recommended Anchorage as the best possibility. It might be far from the oil spill, but it is closer to the thousands of volunteers that would be needed, he said.

Pritchard was not optimistic about the chances for the birds that could be rounded up. Many of the birds brought to the hospital probably would be killed by lethal injection because of their slim chance of survival, he said.

The rest would be tubefed pureed food until their health stabilized. Then, they would be rinsed or washed in soapy water. Eventually, he said, some would be released back into the wild.

Environmental groups in Anchorage have begun organizing volunteers should their help become needed. Bergman has asked that volunteers not come to Valdez.

There is no place to stay, no boats to take people out, no equipment to work with, and nothing to do, she said.

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