Training
APER’s staff have extensive experience in training personal to respond to threatened and impacted wildlife in the event of an oil spill. APER offers a range of different courses that can be customized to meet your specific risk and wildlife needs with our staff having provided oiled wildlife response training nationally and internationally since 2002.
Nationally Accredited Training Course in Oiled Wildlife Response
In 2013 APER developed Australia’s first nationally accredited training course in oiled wildlife response.
The Course in Oiled Wildlife Response offered by APER consists of the nationally accredited unit AHCFAU303 Respond to Wildlife Emergencies.
GEMS Pty Ltd (RTO 90708) through a joint arrangement with APER issues the Statement of Attainment for this accredited unit.
Overall Course Objectives
The overall course objectives are to enable participants to:
- Lead and manage teams of oiled wildlife responders during wildlife emergencies
- Provide wildlife response care to oil impacted animals
Wildlife Groups Targeted
The wildlife focus in the course are specific to the wildlife groups likely to be threatened or impacted during a pollution incident in Australia and may include (depending on the training audience) aquatic birds (sea birds, shorebirds and penguins), marine mammals (seals, dugong and cetaceans) and marine reptiles (marine turtles, crocodiles and sea snakes).
All Hazards Approach
Although the course identifies oil as the primary contaminant the course adopts an all hazards approach (as identified under the National Plan for Maritime Environmental Emergencies) providing skills and knowledge to a range of chemical contaminants that may threaten or impact wildlife.
Course Development
The course was developed based on the experiences of 17 different national and international oiled wildlife responses; best available oiled wildlife response practices internationally; national and international guides and references; the practices of 18 internationally recognized OWR organizations; and input from Australian state and territory government agencies responsible for oiled wildlife response.
The course unit is nationally accredited through the Australian Skills Quality Authority.
Senior Executive training
APER also has available a Senior Executive awareness training course. This course is a summary presentation delivering the very basics of what is involved in an effective oiled wildlife response. The session is generally limited to 2 hours and provides Senior Executives with the knowledge of what to expect during an effective oiled wildlife response and how they can be better prepared to support response activities. This course is non accredited training.
Refresher training
To maintain effective response capability, personnel who have completed the oiled wildlife training courses with APER should undertake refresher training at least once every 2 years. This is typically delivered as a 1-day summary course and is designed to maintain existing skill sets and provide updates on technological advances. This course is not an accredited course unit.
Training records
A data management system of those personnel trained in oiled wildlife response is necessary to support the resourcing information needs for developing incident action plans at the time of an incident.
APER has such systems established already that can be used to maintain a training record system for this purpose.
APER’s staff have delivered oiled wildlife response training to:
- Department of Conservation – Western Australia
- Tasmanian Government, Australia
- Wildlife care groups and NGOs – New South Wales, Tasmania & Western Australia
- Massey University, New Zealand
- International Fund for Animal Welfare, Cape Cod, USA
Accredited Training
