For the Birds

Scaly silver claws splayed across volunteer Sharan Lawrence’s gray wetsuit. A bedraggled white beak emerged from under a towel, and a rubber nasal gastric tube was expertly threaded down the bird’s fluttering throat.

“American coot--the bad boy of the Western flyway,” said Tim Williamson, operations manager of the state Fish and Game Department’s office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response.

Two dozen volunteers and state wildlife rescue staff converged on the barely opened Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center here Tuesday to help save 200 birds after someone deliberately released 24,500 gallons of oil and other toxic materials into the Dominguez Channel in Carson last weekend.

The spill occurred after valves were opened on four delivery trucks at Chemtrans, a hazardous materials transport company. Thousands of gallons of rubbing alcohol, liquid plastic, and isoparafin--toner used for copiers--flowed down storm drains and into channel waters.

“This is someone who knew exactly what they were doing and how to do it,” said Reginald Lathan, president of Chemtrans.

Williamson said spills during the past four months have been the most extensive on record in California.

In September, a crude oil pipeline platform broke at Vandenberg Air Force Base, killing 200 birds, Williamson said. In October, a “mystery goo” consisting of vegetable oil was discovered in Monterey Bay, harming 370 birds.

In November, a tanker hit a dock in Humboldt, ripping open fuel tanks that dumped into Arcadia Bay, killing 500 birds. Also in November, scores of birds that normally stay at sea began landing in the Point Reyes area, and Coast Guard investigators determined that someone had dumped oil at sea near the Farallon Islands. An estimated 500 birds were involved. All told, more than 2,200 birds were captured after the spills.

Fish and Game rescue manager Jonna Mazet said a network of oil-spill rescue centers set up with funds collected from oil companies had saved approximately half the birds affected by the spills.

“Anywhere you transport oil, you’re going to have some spills, no matter what,” said Williamson. “And California moves more oil than anybody, except maybe Texas.”

State officials said the fast, local response of hundreds of volunteers at five sites along the coast had saved most of the birds from death by hypothermia or ingestion of toxic materials.

For the Huntington Beach-based care center, the Carson spill was a chance to use a facility they hope to open within weeks as a regular rehabilitation center for injured seabirds and other wildlife.

The $1-million center has been approved as an oil-spill response center, but is awaiting one more permit from Fish and Game licensing staff to make the facility an around-the-clock wild bird and mammal rescue center.

“This was an emergency opening for the spill,’ said Gary Gorman, a Long beach firefighter who is manager of the center and executive director of the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that has spent years obtaining funds to build the center.

At first glance, the care center is just a collection of trailers tucked in front of the hulking Southern California Edison power generation plant on Pacific Coast Highway.

But inside the largest steel trailer, there are centrifuges for measuring blood, hospital-quality thermometers and other medical equipment tucked on tables next to plastic garbage cans holding wild birdseed and live goldfish.

Behind floor-to-ceiling plastic drapes, nearly 50 shiny metal cages were filled with forlorn-looking ruddy ducks and American coots--otherwise known as mud hens. A pair of tiny sandpipers sat in an incubator cage wrapped in donated towels.

After the birds have been fed liquids and special food for 24 hours, and it is determined they are stable enough to withstand the shock, they will be washed. Across the room from the cages, three wall-length steel trays stand ready, stacked with jumbo containers of Dawn dishwashing liquid and rubber gloves. Out back, six concrete, square bird-bathing pools will be filled within days.

“If we get them early, they have a much better chance,” said Kristen Bender, chairman of the board of the center, and a biology professor at Cal State Long Beach. “If they start to preen themselves and swallow what’s in their wings, they have a much higher mortality rate.”

A quick rescue of the birds was made possible because a passerby noticed a brown sheen on the water and called to report it.

Times correspondent Joe Mozingo contributed to this story.