The governing bodies of two regional oil pollution response agreements have recently recognised the importance to be prepared for oiled wildlife incidents.
The recent Baltic Sea Action Plan, the policy document for international environmnetal policy in the Baltic Sea region, includes the objective to integrate oiled wildlife response in existing plans for oil spill response. Following the adoption of the Baltic Sea Action Plan, the HELCOM RESPONSE group has included the subject in its working programme. At their most recent meeting, HELCOM RESPONSE decided to make an inventory of current preparedness of the different Contracting Parties before the next meeting.
Also the OTSOPA meeting of the Bonn Agreement has recently discussed oiled wildlife response. At its annual meeting, in Southampton (UK) 27-30 May 2008, OTSOPA decided that this is an important issue with great relevance for the Bonn Agreement. It was noted that most of the contracting parties have already taken action in this regard. The meeting agreed that Contracting Parties should report on wildlife response operations as part of hte BonnAgreement information exchange on pollution incidents and that updates should be provided to OTSOPA as and when necessary. This decision can be found in the Summary Record (document OTSOPA 08/12/1-E), which can be downloaded from http://www.bonnagreement.org, under "Meetings and Documents".