Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have consistently been doing their part in the oil spills scene in Singapore as well. However, their contributions and efforts go beyond cleaning up the sites, which we have previously seen were done by the governmental institutions and the oil spill response companies. What I would like to bring to attention here is the efforts in rescuing wildlife that are victimized in incidents of oil spills. The primary concern in the event an oil spill occurs would often be how quickly and efficiently can the oil spill site be cleaned up without causing inconvenience to people but we often disregard the actual victims of these tragedies, which are the wildlife animals.

A crab before rescue efforts (above) and after rescue efforts (below) by volunteers from ACRES

Photo source: ACRES Facebook page

Fortunately, there are NGOs such as the Animal Concerns Research & Education Society (ACRES) that have kindly stepped forward to take up the role of rescuing animals implicated by oil spills. ACRES is also a non-profit, animal protection and Singapore-based charity organization founded in 2001, which have rescued a total of 2764 animals as of 5 November 2014. In a particular collision in May 2010 leading to an oil spill, ACRES helped saved over 200 animal lives, in which the volunteers thoroughly cleaned and relocated them to other safer regions not contaminated by the oil spill.

It is comforting to see that our community concerns for oil spill situations go beyond that of just cleaning up the sites, but also extends to the poor wildlife that are often innocent victims of our carelessness and actions. We can see that these non-governmental agencies are taking the extra effort to tackle the often-neglected issues that come hand-in-hand with oil spill incidents. Therefore, we can be rest assured that the local oil spill situations are combated in various possible directions and that we are not on an one-end route towards just clearing up the oil spill sites.