Dr. Valle, who is presently in the Galapagos directing WWF's Galapagos emergency response team, will assume his new duties immediately as Wildlife Rescue Coordinator for the Galapagos National Park Service.
"At its request, we are temporarily assigning Dr. Valle to the National Park Service to help direct both the urgent task of rescuing and rehabilitating wildlife impacted by the spill and the equally critical challenge of tracking the fuel that is still in the area and that continues to pose a serious threat to wildlife," said William Eichbaum, vice president of WWF's Endangered Spaces Program.
While most of the nearly 200,000 gallons of diesel and bunker fuel from last week's spill has moved northwards, away from the islands and out towards open sea, scores of smaller slicks remain in the area around Santa Fe and Bartolome islands, home to penguins, iguanas and seabird colonies.
"Although we have been very lucky to have the winds and currents on our side so far, the potential for more serious damage still exists and the situation, particularly with respect to the many smaller slicks, will have to be monitored very closely over the next several weeks," Valle said.
To assist in that effort, World Wildlife Fund is paying for the costs of two aerial monitoring flights a day over the islands for at least the next two weeks. The overflights will help authorities monitor the location of the oil slicks so that clean up crews can be mobilized when and where they are most needed.
On Wednesday, WWF announced an initial emergency grant of $100,000 to help pay clean up costs from the spill that occurred when the Jessica ran aground off San Cristobal Island the previous week. The grant is also being used to feed and support 80 volunteers engaged in clean up operations and to provide them with shovels, buckets, boots and other equipment.
A native of the Galapagos, Dr. Valle is a respected ornithologist who received his Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Princeton University and who previously taught conservation and ecology at San Francisco University in Quito. He is a member of the Charles Darwin Foundation's executive council and has been serving as WWF's Galapagos coordinator for the past two years.
