There are very few wildlife centres that are prepared to work with oiled seabirds.   Our centre is one of only a handful in the whole of the UK.  We aim to provide the very best service to our seabird casualties, and to assure those finding a needy seabird, that it will receive the best attention.

Our work has always been conducted in South Devon, however, our reputation for excellent results has meant that oiled sea birds have been brought to us from all along the south coast of England.

In 1997 the Trust was presented with a 'Best of the West' award from Westcountry television, for rescue and rehabilitation of oiled seabirds.

The demand for our services increased year on year, and in order to accommodate a growing number of oiled seabirds, the decision was taken by the Trustees in 1996 to open a second rehabilitation centre.  

The new centre was opened to the public in 1997.  The two centres were capable of caring for up to 350 oiled auks at one time, besides other seabird casualties.

This additional facility was also equiped with a visitors viewing room from which members of the public could watch the birds in the 'release' aviary, without disturbing, or being seen by the birds.  Emphasis was placed on the fact that our birds were wild and would be returning to the wild, therefore, quiet observation was essential. 

Being able to view birds just prior to their release was a great benefit to our work since the majority of visitors had 1) never seen a guillemot before, and 2) were under the impression that these birds could not be saved, as had been alleged in two damning reports.   The comment from most visitors was "we had heard oiled guillemots could not be rehabilitated, but there is nothing wrong with these".  Many of our visitors are now Friends of the Trust who receive an annual Newsletter.

We were able to keep the two centres operational from 1997 to 2004, but decided to close the larger centre due mainly to the fact that there were insufficient funds to be able to employ help.  The Trust is run entirely by volunteers.  Most the volunteers kindly patrol beaches for us and bring any birds they find to the centre for treatment.   The volunteers who undertake the work of rehabilitation are on  duty  7 days a week throughout the year.  

Although we should like to have kept both centres open, because the demand for our services was still as high as ever, we had however, achieved one of our goals which was to ring a sufficient number of guillemots to form a good basis from which we could provide evidence to substantiate our claim that these birds, with the correct treatment, could be rehabilitated successfully and survive after release.   Over 1,000 guillemots had been ringed (as well as a good number of other seabirds) and the data now being gathered from these birds has proved to be critical in supporting our claim and providing the evidence we needed to contradict some negative reports in the past, which had led to hundreds of guillemots being needlessly slaughtered.

Whilst it is our intention to enlarge our operation again in the future, in the meantime we are able to accommodate up to 100 auks at a time, thereby still providing a very useful service to the local area.   

We are also on hand to advise other rehabilitators and distribute copies of our Oiled Seabird Rehabilitation Methodology.