Six gulls that spent the last month recovering from being soaked in a greasy substance have been released to the wild.
Wildlife Rescue returned the gulls to Woodlawn Park in East Vancouver on Monday afternoon.
Passersby had found the gulls a month ago along Frances Street.
“They were just drenched and weighed down by [the greasy substance],” says Sam Smith of Wildlife Rescue, which undertook the clean-and-return mission. Because the gulls had so much trouble moving, they were very easy to catch.
The birds were found in the same general area as 62 gulls that were rescued two years ago.
In March 2016, the Superior Tofu processing facility on East Pender Street found the birds trapped in a vat containing soybean pulp. The vat had been covered in a grate the week before to prevent theft of the pulp, which a local farmer purchases for cow feed. The grate was large enough to allow for the birds to get in, but too small to allow them to fly out again.
It’s not known whether the six gulls found last month had been in the Superior Tofu vat, although the greasy substance was similar, Smith says.
The Courier contacted the company. Saiho Yeung, the vice-president of operations, says Superior Tofu takes the problem seriously. After the incident two years ago, the company started to cover the vat with a tarp.
However, about a month ago there was a wind storm that blew the tarp off, he said. Ever since then, staff has been instructed to check on the cover every three hours and the company is adding a second tarp.
“All the shift workers know how important it is,” he said. “No matter what the weather, we have to do our job [to ensure the cover is on]… We are still figuring out how to do it better.”
The trick, he says, is “to not let the gulls see our tofu waste.”
“This spot in East Vancouver has proven to be a problem for wildlife,” says Wildlife Rescue’s executive director Coleen Doucette in a press release. “This is an issue that needs to be addressed.”
The problem for gulls and other birds is that when they get covered in grease, they not only can’t wash it off but it prevents their bodies from thermoregulating. They can die from hypothermia as a result.
“If left untreated, it would have eventually killed them,” Smith says.
Volunteers spent the month putting the gulls through a sensitive washing process to rid them of the grease.
With files from James Smith.
