WILDLIFE EXPERT SEES TO CLEANING OF OIL FOULED BIRDS

By DOUG O'HARRA
Daily News reporter

ANCHORAGE- Dr. Jessica Porter, 40, veterinarian, wildlife expert, bird cleaner at the Prince William Sound oil spill.Porter first washed oil fouled birds as a teenage volunteer at a British oil spill in the mid 1960s. But she knew she wanted to spend her life caring for animals well before then.

"I knew when I was 8 years old that I was going to be a vet or a zookeeper," she says.

Porter now operates the Wolf Hollow Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Puget Sound, Wash. She's working on contract in Valdez as medical director of the new wildlife rehabilitation center.

"The situation in Valdez is completely opposite the one in Washington. Searching for birds here is a logistical nightmare. People may be spending 30 to 40 minutes picking up one bird.

"I feel absolute sympathy for these animals. These poor little guys are suffering so much, and they're victims of something that has nothing to do with them. They're not benefiting from human lifestyle."

"Some animals come in so badly oiled when you get to a number of oil spills, you can almost know which birds are going to make it that there's no point in keeping them around and watching them suffer. You euthanize them.

"(Birds that can survive) are checked to see if they're warm. . . . When they get warmed up, we tube them with electrolyte solution to counteract the effects of dehydration. Once oil is ingested, it messes up the kidney system so that even water that is ingested can't be utilized.

"You try to get (volunteers) to talk quietly and move slowly around them. We try to keep (the birds) covered up so they don't have constant visual stimuli. We try to keep sheets over them as sort of a barrier. No matter how upset they are, if you put them in a box obviously with holes in it, a dark, quiet place they calm down.

"A mammal is like a dog or a cat you can cuddle them and tell them it's all right. You can't do that to a bird. The only thing you can do for a bird is get the hell away from them that's what they want. We're huge predators to them."

"Hard water will not get the birds clean enough to float and be released. It has to be soft water. . . . Dawn is the detergent of choice. The commercials are absolutely right it cuts grease. It's also the least irritating. When we get it down to 1 percent solution, it doesn't sting, it doesn't burn.

"We have a series of tubs with 1 percent Dawn at a temperature of 105. The bird is put into the tub and scrubbed until that water is dirty, and then the bird is put into the next tub and scrubbed until that water is dirty, and we just keep going. It may take 10 tubs. It just depends on how oily the bird is.

"Then we rinse them with a highpressure hose. Actually, we rinse them until they are dry, which sounds funny but it's true. You've got to have enough pressure in the hose to lift the feathers when you're rinsing. When they're rinsed, they won't look wet they'll look dry.

"If you don't get all the soap out, you have a very clean bird but one that won't float. What causes the bird to float is that the feathers form a basket around the bird. It's like a wet suit. When you get oil on the feathers, it interrupts that basket, and it lets cold water in. It's like getting a hole in a wet suit.

"Once dry, they go out into a pool. We have to test to see if they are floating. We're not going to let the bird go if they can't float.

"If we have soft water and we have good washings and a good rinse, they usually can be released within 48 hours of coming to the center."

"One of the biggest problems with an oil spill is that you're going to lose about 50 percent of these animals and it hurts. It really hurts."

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