Tracie Driver and Linda Osborne of NorthWest EcoExcursions offer environmentally friendly kayak, camping, and hiking trips from their Depoe Bay-based operation. The business is scaling down to a bare bones level after Driver, a certified wildlife rehabilitator, headed to the Gulf Coast on July 6 to help clean up and care for oil-soaked sea and shore birds. (Courtesy photo)

Eco-tourism business owner aids in bird rescue



So far, more than 44,000 folks, nearly 6,600 boats and vessels of various sizes, and 113 aircraft are involved in the intensive clean-up and containment effort in and on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

At least one more person - this one from Lincoln County - recently responded to pleas for more assistance.

Tracie Driver - a Depoe Bay resident, eco-tourism business owner, and wildlife rehabilitation specialist - joined the fray last week. She left July 6, traveling first to Louisiana to ply her skills as an aquatic bird rescuer under the direction of the California-based International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC).

“When I got the call, I felt like it was something I needed to do,” Driver told the News-Times in an interview the day before her scheduled departure. “When you have specialized training that so few are trained to do, it’s hard to ignore. This is what my company is all about.”

Driver started NorthWest EcoExcursions (NWEE) determined to instill in others a passion for connecting to the natural environment that she learned and absorbed while growing up in a Native American home.

A member of the Oklahoma Cherokee tribe adopted by her grandmother, a tribal holy woman, Driver said she was raised “to be connected to nature, and sensitive to changes in the seasons and the natural world.” Among other things, she learned right and wrong times for activities, such as hunting or berry-picking, that intimately dovetailed with the ecosystem around them, and how to balance the needs of all living things within that ecosystem.

She incorporates those lessons into her business, weaving Native American history, culture, traditions, and legends into each trip, and combining outdoor recreation with environmental education.

Before starting NWEE, Driver, who has formal training in recreational management and environmental interpretation, served for nine years as a park ranger in two states. She also has 20 years experience in kayaking, and 30 years each of experience in horse care and management, and wilderness camping and hiking.

For now, the business is going into a “bare bones” mode, headed up by associate Linda Osborne.

“It’s going to hurt our bottom line,” said Driver. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. I could be back in six weeks, or it could be as long as four months.”

Her absence will extend at least through the main eco-tourism season, but it’s a sacrifice Driver and her associates are willing to make as Driver puts her 16 years of experience as a certified wildlife rehabilitator to the ultimate test to again work with IBRRC as she did after the 1999 New Carissa oil spill off the Oregon coast near Coos Bay.



For the birds



IBRRC activated a team of aquatic bird rescue specialists at the end of April in response to the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig accident.

“Our primary role here is to support local groups and to work together to make sure we do everything we can to minimize the impact on local wildlife,” said center Director Jay Holcomb, who has personally responded to more than 150 oil spills around the world, including the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Since then, the bird rescue team has worked with local organizations to monitor the effort and determine the need for additional assistance.

Driver heeded the latest SOS call.

She knows from experience that oil-coated sea or shore birds stand little or no chance of survival without human intervention. Oil saturation hinders their ability to fly, and inhalation or ingestion of hydrocarbons stresses and inhibits respiratory and digestive systems, and poisons internal organs.

Driver has responded before, and has the scars to prove it.

Frightened animals, she noted, often lash out at their would-be rescuers.

“They don’t always know you’re trying to help,” she explained, which is why only wildlife rehabilitators certified to handle the stressed-out creatures and hazardous and bio-hazardous materials are permitted to join the “bucket brigades” to care for survivors. Before she left, Driver had to take an eight-hour online hazardous materials refresher course sent to her by BP.

“We’re not bunny huggers,” Driver pointed out. “We’re professionals trained in special techniques to get these stressed animals cleaned up.”

Driver said some people are more clueless than the critters in understanding the repercussions of this massive spill, and what it will take to recover from it.

“Technology has removed us from being connected to nature. People don’t understand the impact and effects on the overall ecosystem balance,” she noted. “We have to restore that balance as best we can, and that’s exactly why I’m going.”

As Driver - who tries to instill that connection during NWEE corporate team-building sessions that she describes as “Amazing Race meets Survivor” - noted, the BP spill “is a whole other animal,” a new species of spill never before encountered.



By the numbers



When the 640-foot freighter New Carissa ran aground on the Oregon coast during a major winter storm in February 1999, it spilled an estimated 70,000 to 140,000 gallons of the nearly 400,000 gallons of fuel oil onboard. Search teams captured, cleaned, cared for, and released 230 oiled sea and shore birds, and recovered more than 1,300 dead birds. Using field studies and computer modeling, an assessment team estimated that the spill killed or injured 2, 453 seabirds and 672 shorebirds.

In 1989, the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, killing an estimated 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, 22 orcas (killer whales), and 1 billion salmon and herring eggs. More than 20 years later, scientists are still learning about the effects on wildlife, and biologists who worked on the Alaska spill are lending their expertise in the Gulf situation.

The BP gusher, while somewhat attenuated, is still adding daily to the estimated 80 million to 150 million gallons of ooze already in the water. Its edges have now reached the shorelines of all Gulf Coast states.

“It hasn’t stopped yet,” said Driver. “With spills from ships, we at least know how much potentially will leak. We can’t anticipate the full impact and damage yet.”

Even if they get the leak stopped before the end of August and avoid delays from hurricane season, Driver said the situation could turn “from tragic to catastrophic if this goes into the fall.”



Leaving a legacy



“It’s not just about the current impact, or even how it will impact us in the near future. We are living on resources borrowed from our children and generations not yet born,” she added, referring to a traditional line of Native American thought. “We are so into me and now and technology when we should be concerned with what condition we’re leaving the planet in for them.”

That overriding concern is what’s driving Driver to go to the Gulf “until the spill is done with,” even though it means the cash flow for her business will slow to a trickle much quicker than the undersea oil gusher, and being away from her 7-year-old daughter, Katrina, and six-year-old pound puppy rescue, Buster.

It’s one way of trying to leave her daughter - and others - a healthy environment as part of her legacy.



Terry Dillman is the assistant editor of the News-Times. Contact him at 541-265-8571, ext 225, or terrydillman@newportnewstimes.com.





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