Chris Battaglia, President, Co-founder, Owner

Chris Battaglia is co-founder and President of Focus Wildlife and has been actively involved in oiled wildlife response since 1988. Beginning with the Exxon Valdez in 1989, he has participated in the wildlife response portion of over eighty oil spills nationally and internationally. After receiving his MA in Teaching and Teacher Education in 2000, Chris became the Education Director for International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC) in California. During that time, he also co-managed the Oiled Wildlife Care Network (OWCN) Los Angeles Oiled Bird Care and Education Center.

Over the course of his career in oiled wildlife, Chris has worked in every aspect of response, ranging from wildlife assessment to facilities management, deterrence and capture to management of responses, and animal care operations to agency and media liaison. Chris determined capacity and resource requirements for the rehabilitation infrastructure in the largest oiled wildlife response effort to date, in South Africa in 2000 (M/V Treasure), in which over 40,000 oiled African Penguins were successfully rehabilitated and/or relocated. Chris specializes in the development and maintenance of deterrence and hazing plans, equipment and techniques; post-incident capture of oiled wildlife; and response facility infrastructure and design.

Lana Battaglia, director, Co-Founder, Owner

Lana Battaglia is the co-founder/owner of Focus Wildlife, and the principal architect behind its formation as a professional oiled wildlife response contractor. During her years as the rehabilitation manager at Wild ARC on Vancouver Island, she was troubled that in BC, and elsewhere, general wildlife rehabilitation NGOs were tasked with being the sole care providers for wildlife impacted by oil spills. Lana recognized that the skills, resources, and infrastructure required to properly address oiled wildlife issues were well beyond the mandate, resources and capacity of general wildlife rehabilitation organizations. 

Work with International Bird Rescue (IBR) in California, the management of the UC Davis Oiled Wildlife Care Network (OWCN) oiled wildlife/seabird facility in Los Angeles, and participation in global oiled wildlife response efforts with IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare) confirmed her beliefs.  Those years cemented her determination to bring critical knowledge and expertise in oiled wildlife response, management, and rehabilitation to the Pacific Northwest, Canada, and BC in particular. 

Lana’s mission has been to build a company that will enable industry and government to confidently and reliably call upon a highly professional oiled wildlife response organization in the case of an emergency.  In fulfilling this mission, Focus Wildlife provides world class response services not only to wildlife impacted by oil spills, but to the community as a whole.

Lana’s extensive expertise encompasses all aspects of oiled wildlife response. She specializes in overarching strategic planning for both business and emergency response operations.

Jenny Schlieps, Program Manager, Rehabilitation Manager

Jenny Schlieps is the Program Manager and Rehabilitation Manager for Focus Wildlife. She began working with wildlife in 1994 and has extensive experience with a broad range of wildlife species including, but not limited to, seabirds, waterfowl, raptors, passerines, terrestrial and aquatic mammals, turtles, amphibians, large carnivores and marine mammals. She has actively responded to oil spills since 2003. She specializes in wildlife assessment, field stabilization and direct animal care.

Jenny’s primary role is operational and animal care management during the course of a response. In her role for Focus Wildlife consulting services, she assists with oiled wildlife response planning and animal care standards. She also serves on the Focus Wildlife training team, providing valuable input to wildlife response and safety training courses.

She is a founding and current board member of the Washington Wildlife Rehabilitation Association (WWRA) and serves on the board of the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association (NWRA). She graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and holds a certificate from the University of Washington in Applied Animal Behavior.

Charlie Hebert, senior advisor

Charlie is a wildlife biologist serving as the Response Planning Manager for Focus Wildlife. Charlie also serves on the Focus Wildlife training team, providing valuable input to wildlife response and safety training courses.

Charlie served for 33 years as a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Charlie most recently served as the Spill Response Coordinator for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Region 1, in Portland, Oregon. His primary role was to assist field personnel in responding to oil spills in the Pacific Region. Additionally he provided assistance with response technologies and area contingency planning for RRT10 and The Northwest Area Contingency Plan.

Charlie also frequently assisted other FWS Regions on larger oil spills and oil spill contingency planning. He worked on many of the larger oil spills that have occurred in the United States in the past 20 years, including serving as Deputy Wildlife Branch Director during the Deepwater Horizon.

Charlie began working for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1979, conducting waterfowl research with the Migratory Bird Management Office. He “moved up” to Refuges in 1981 and subsequently worked at 5 field stations, comprised of 22 National Wildlife Refuges across the United States. Charlie began working with oil spills in Louisiana in 1984 at Delta National Wildlife Refuge where spills were a frequent occurrence. Prior to moving to Portland, Charlie was the Refuge Manager of the Rhode Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex and served as the Field Response Coordinator for oil spills in southern New England. Charlie graduated from Louisiana State University with a B.S. in Forestry and an M.S. in Wildlife Management.

Jose Rios, emergency management specialist/marine scientist

Jose Rios is a civil engineer with a Masters Degree in Coastal Zone Management. He has over 25 years background in scientific & commercial diving, emergency management (EM), and promoting engineering and Health and Environmental Safety (HES) growth through strategic leadership and innovative integration of challenging functional areas.

Jose has 7 years of consultant growth with Polaris Applied Sciences as a partner, Emergency Management Specialist and Marine Scientist. He also has more than 13 years of experience in the EM arena for Chevron and ConocoPhillips. He combines strong leadership and team building skills with the ability to capture business advantage, negotiate and establish tactical alliances, direct project planning and execution, instill an incident-free culture in organizations, and manage corporate reputation. Jose has provided leadership and management to numerous EM events worldwide that required coordinating representatives from industry and governmental agencies to meet response strategic objectives.

Jose has participated in multiple oiled wildlife response events, offering a unique set of emergency management and environmental response expertise, making him an invaluable asset for oiled wildlife field response operations.

MARIE TRAVERS, Oiled wildlife/aquatic bird specialist

Marie has 20 years of direct hands-on experience with wildlife and specializes in aquatic birds and oiled wildlife response operations. She is an Oiled Wildlife Specialist and Rehabilitation Manager with Focus Wildlife Canada/International, and has responded to oil spills in the US and internationally.

Marie currently serves on the Wild Neighbors Database Project board and has previously served on the boards of the California Council for Wildlife Rehabilitators (CCWR) and Bird Ally X.  She also manages the Avian Botulism Wildlife Rehabilitation Project at Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge.  She volunteers at Native Songbird Care and Conservation and is a BeachWatch volunteer with the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.

Marie is a co-founder of Bird Ally X and co-author of the publication, ‘An Introduction to Aquatic Bird Rehabilitation’, an invaluable reference publication for professionals working with water birds in a captive setting. Marie has been instrumental in the ongoing development of specialized oiled wildlife care techniques, and has been involved in the training and education of wildlife rehabilitators across the US in all aspects of wildlife rehabilitation, and oiled wildlife rehabilitation, in particular.  Her unique set of skills and background make her a great asset to wildlife oiling events.

C. Paul sargent, senior wildlife biologist

C. Paul Sargent has over 20 years of experience with wildlife capture and handling, wildlife census and survey, wildlife habitat assessment, human-wildlife conflict management, and designing wildlife monitoring programs. He has extensive survey and handling experience with large carnivores, ungulates, meso-carnivores, small mammals, passerines, raptors, waterfowl, shorebirds, and amphibians. He is proficient with wildlife species identification from visual observation and from sign, tracks, vocalizations, and habitat feature recognition. His years of observing wildlife have given him valuable insights into assessing and interpreting wildlife behaviour, a comprehensive understanding of habitat selection and use, and familiarity with wildlife movement patterns.

He skill set has been invaluable as a member of wildlife command teams for spill response; including strategic response planning, assessment of impacted wildlife and wildlife habitat, developing wildlife monitoring plans, wildlife deterrent deployment strategies, and recovery of impacted wildlife.

Tracy Anderson, Wildlife Response Specialist

Tracy has worked on various projects with Focus Wildlife since 2010. She started her career in wildlife rehabilitation as a volunteer at Mountainaire Avian Rescue Society in Courtenay BC and, a couple of years later, became their first ever employee as a summer student. Following completion of a BSc at the University of Victoria, she joined the team at Wild ARC in Victoria as a wildlife rehabilitator for 6 years. Interested in learning waterbird-specific rehabilitation techniques, she spent several months at International Bird Rescue and then her desire for further travel and adventure took her to Belize to manage a small avian-specific facility for a year.

Following some seasonal work on endangered species propagation with Eastern Loggerhead Shrikes in Ontario and bird banding experience at two migration monitoring stations in eastern Canada, she ended up in Hawai‘i as the Coordinator of the Save Our Shearwaters program on Kaua‘i from 2011-2019. There she had the privilege of working with the native seabirds and waterbirds of the Hawaiian Islands – many of which are threatened or endangered. She has sat on the boards of the Victoria Natural History Society and Rocky Point Bird Observatory and is currently on the board of the Wildlife Rehabilitator’s Network of BC.