San Diego, CA (special) -- Dr. Scott Newman, a veterinarian who is a veteran of the Exxon Valdez spill, was in San Diego last week to help break ground for a new center dedicated to aiding birds which may be imperiled by future oil spills. 

The SeaWorld Oiled Wildlife Care Center, when constructed, will have facilities to clean up and care for 400 birds, should the occasion arise. When not in use as an oil spill emergency center, the 2,600 square foot facility on Mission Bay will be used by the theme park for treatment of injured or abandoned animals and as an educational exhibit. 

Newman, who grew up at Temple Shaare Shalom in Springfield, N.J., and attended Hebrew University before deciding to follow his father into the veterinary world, today serves as the Oiled Wildlife Care Network's response veterinarian. Whenever there is an oil spill in California coastal waters he is called from the University of California at Davis campus to come to the rescue of the endangered animals. The SeaWorld facility is one of 21 wildlife care centers in the network running the length of the state. 

The groundbreaking on Wednesday, March 24, was held on the 10th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez incident in which an oil tanker slammed against a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, pouring 10 million gallons of crude oil into the sea and fouling 400 miles of coastline. Newman, who had been visiting Alaska during a break from his studies at veterinary school, volunteered to work at a "bird rehab" center in the town of Seward. 

"It was overwhelming," he recalled. "There were hundreds and thousands of animals--and what seemed like a lot of people--and you could see a lot of suffering and it was challenging mentally to deal with." 

As a volunteer, he did "anything from cleaning cages, picking up soiled newspapers, feeding birds, washing birds-- the whole rehab process." In addition, during the two month stint, "I also did some sea otter radio tracking after the first batch of sea otters were released from the Valdez cleanup." 

But releasing birds back to the wild made an even greater impression, Newman said. "We went  down to a beach that was away from where the spill had occurred and we had a group of boxes with a group of birds in them, and ...we opened the boxes and watched all these brilliant birds scamper back into the water, some flying, some running, some swimming." 

After completing his veterinary schooling at Tufts University, Newman did an internship at the Animal Medical Center in New York City, then completed a Ph.D program at UC Davis, "oriented toward the health of free-ranging birds and the effect of oil pollution on the health of those birds." 

Newman said one of the problems in treating the birds was that there was no data to know whether their blood chemistry was normal or abnormal after possibly having ingested oil. "Nobody knew what the health of a tufted puffin or a crested auklet might be," he recalled. "If you have nothing to compare them to, you don't know. 

"So that was the big thrust of my initial research, to set up baseline reference ranges of health for these animals," Newman said. "Now we have something to compare them to when they come in sick and we know also when they are healthy enough to be released." 

He said that so far he has determined baseline ranges for approximately 14 species, looking at such things as immune system cells, white cells, red cells, electrolytes, kidney function and liver function. Examination of each species involved sampling approximately 30 individuals, he said. Work was also done on various varieties of pelicans, gulls, cormorants and coots. 

At the groundbreaking ceremonies, Pete Bontadelli, administrator of California's Office of Spill Prevention and Response, said that in the 10 years since the Exxon Valdez incident, "we have found that permanent facilities, readily located, make a big difference in survival rates. We have found that a trained and dedicated staff, largely volunteers but supervised by professionals, is critical to bringing our program together and making it effective." 

Bontadelli said funds for the wildlife bird center were provided by the oil industry which paid a onetime 25 cents per barrel assessment to create a $50 million fund for use in the event of an incident. The interest earned by that $50 million fund pays for the creation and maintenance of the network. 

"Part of the reality of our society is that we are dependent on oil as fuel, and as long as that is the case we have transportation of oil as part of the reality of our lives," Bontadelli said. "Given that, we can all work together to make it safe as possible to avoid incidents...But human error can  happen... This facility is one more cornerstone of that preparation." 

Matt Rezvani, Arco's manager for local government relations, reported that since the Exxon Valdez incident the oil industry has spent millions of dollars every year for training exercises, and billions of dollars for safety and response equipment. He said his own company is building three new Millennium-class oil tankers which, for safety, have redundant steering systems, redundant propulsion systems and state-of-the-art navigation systems. 

"When issues come on the table, rather than polarizing, if we work cooperatively and work as partners, we can achieve much more than what we can achieve individually," he said. 

Dr. Jonna Mazet, director for the Oiled Wildlife Care Network program at SeaWorld, summarized that "unfortunately people make mistakes and today we stand here 10 years after a huge mistake. But fortunately we in this society learn from our mistakes and I believe that the collaboration and the partnerships that you are witnessing here that make this facility possible for the San Diego area, are really the results of our learning how to be prepared and how to respond when inevitable and unfortunate incidents happen."