In an unusually prolonged crisis, UC Davis wildlife veterinarians have been working 15-hour days since Thanksgiving to save seabirds oiled off the coast of Northern California.

At Dateline’s press time on Wednes-day, a total of 484 live birds and 669 dead birds, mostly common murres, had been recovered between Bodega Bay and Monterey, making this spill one of the worst in California history.

Dubbed the San Mateo Mystery Spill for its uncertain origin, the current emergency is also the biggest test yet for a new statewide network of rescue facilities managed by the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center.

The Oiled Wildlife Care Network comprises nine rescue facilities and 25 organizations prepared to care for oiled wildlife on short notice, said UC Davis veterinarian and network director Jonna Mazet.

Last year, the jewels in the network were completed – two state-of-the-art facilities, each capable of caring for up to 1,000 birds that have swallowed, inhaled or been coated with oil. One is in the Los Angeles area; the other is in the San Francisco Bay Area, at Cordelia, and is the center handling birds from the current crisis.

Mazet and three other UC Davis wildlife veterinarians are rotating shifts at the Cordelia center – Michael Ziccardi, Scott Newman and Christine Kreuder. They work in partnership with staff rehabilitators from International Bird Rescue Research Center and volunteers.

The network was designed according to expertise accumulated during the past decade by wildlife veterinarians and oil-spill-response personnel from UC Davis and California Department of Fish and Game – expertise that appears to be dramatically reducing oiled-bird deaths.

"The mission of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network is to ensure that wildlife exposed to petroleum products receive the best achievable treatment," said Mazet. "We do that by ensuring rapid response, coordinating effective emergency care in a spill crisis and administering an ongoing research program."

The network funds basic research into the effects of oil on wildlife and applied research into treatments that will improve survival. About $250,000 in competitive grants are awarded annually to five to eight researchers.

It also administers follow-up studies on rehabilitated wildlife. One of those studies, following some of the 288 birds treated and released after the 1999 Stuyvesant spill in Humboldt Bay, is informing the veterinarians’ actions in the current situation.

"One thing we learned from the Stuyvesant study is that after they are released, rehabilitated adult common murres have good survival rates and appear to behave like other wild murres," Mazet said. "Juveniles may not do as well, so we are feeding that information back into the loop this time. We are allowing more recuperation time for the young birds and making sure they have gained enough weight to sustain them once they are released."

The Wildlife Health Center is a unit of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. It manages the Oiled Wildlife Care Network with funding from the Office of Spill Prevention and Response of the California Department of Fish and Game. The Fish and Game monies come from interest on the $50 million California Oil Spill Response Trust Fund, built from assessments on the oil industry.

Volunteers are still needed at the Cordelia center. For information, call the volunteer hotline at (707) 207-0380, extension 107.