In response to oiled wildlife incidents, authorities and responders often set up their activities without an effective response plan in place and without a pre-defined strategy. Consequently, many protocols are reinvented and mistakes are repeated without lessons from past responses being learned.

The oil spill incidents page provides individual overviews of oil spills that have occurred in European and international waters since 1993 where wildlife was affected. Additional information on oil spill case histories can be obtained from the following links:

• The International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation (ITOPF) website provides a general global overview of oil spills from tankers and other sources.
• Review of the impacts of recent major oil spills on seabirds, Camphuysen, C.J., Chardine, J., Morten, F. and Nunes, M. 2005.
• Holcomb, J. & Russel, M. 2003, Abstract In: Proceedings of the 7th International Effects of Oil on Wildlife, October 23-24, Hamburg, Germany. A copy can be requested from Sea Alarm.
• The International Bird Rescue and Research Centre (IBRRC) website provides an overview of the oiled wildlife incidents it has responded to from 1971.
• The Cedre database of oil spill incidents provides an overview of an extensive list of oil and chemical spill incidents dating from 1947, see http://www.cedre.fr/en/spill/alphabetical-classification.php.