Let’s Talk Trash!
5
TRASH!
©2016 The Keenan Group, Inc
The Deadly Truth about
by Ruthanne Johnson
As a wildlife rehabilitator, Renata Schneider has seen a number of trash related injuries—birds poisoned from lead weights, skunks with yogurt containers stuck on their heads, birds’ eyes poked out from fishing hooks. But the worst case she remembers was a raccoon whose paws were stuck in beer cans.
This ubiquitous trash provides an ample banquet for wild animals displaced into developed areas due to shrinking habitats. Unfortunately, the simple act of satisfying hunger pangs often ends in injury or death. Plastic items become intestinal blockages; baited fishing lines entangle limbs, hindering movement and causing
“The trash slices them up, and by the time they come in to us the injuries are so advanced that we can’t do much for them.” The statistic highlights the lethal dangers
dismemberment; and aluminum cans with leftover soda or beer turn into razorsharp traps. Litter is also an indirect killer. Tossed from car windows, it puts curious animals in the path of oncoming vehicles. “The majority of what we see is casual garbage, the
“The cans had been on his limbs for so long that he had tried to learn to walk with
them, and both front limbs were completely damaged,” says Schneider, a veterinarian at the SPCA Wildlife Care Center in Fort
things that are cast off on the side of the road— the convenience food, wrappers, and bottles,” says Robbie Fearn, director of The
The carelessness of a litterbug altered Peanut’s life forever, but it never slowed her down. Decades after being rescued from the plastic ring of a six-pack holder, the tenacious turtle is still alive and well. “People see her and learn her story, and they get it,” Peanut’s handler, Amy Wilkinson from the Missouri Department of Conservation said. “She’s a great example of why not to litter.”
HSUS’s Cape Wildlife Center in Cape Cod, Mass. “For years, I would throw my apple cores and other food out the window of my car, thinking it’s going to compost and go back into the wild, never considering the fact it’s actually drawing animals who might then get hit by a car.” This roadside garbage has a domino effect, Fearn says. “In the case of raptors, the garbage attracts rodents, and then the bird goes after this prey and gets hit by a car.” Trash can also create conflict between people and hungry wild animals in search of food... to be continued next issue! Source : http://www.humanesociety.org/news/magazines/2009/07-08/the_deadly_ truth_about_trash.html
posed by some of the 250 million tons of trash discarded by Americans every year. While much of this garbage is hauled to landfills, a large amount makes its way into the natural environment. In West Virginia alone, according to the state’s transportation department, a two-mile stretch of highway yields around 32,000 pieces of refuse. Debris also clogs the oceans; the Ocean Conservancy’s 2008 International Coastal Cleanup garnered 3.7 million pounds of trash along 9,000 miles of U.S. shorelines in a single day. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a huge conglomeration of plastic and other nonbiodegradable flotsam swirling off the California coast, is estimated at anywhere from twice as big as Texas to larger than the U.S.
Lauderdale, Fla. “We sedated him and took the cans off his hands, which were nothing but raw flesh anymore. There was no fur, no skin, and he was alive and getting around, but thin.” Sadly, it had to be euthanized. Though the center’s employees are able to save many of the 14,000 animals admitted annually, most of the raccoons suffering from can injuries or entangled in plastic six-pack rings are not so lucky.
RIDDLES
What’s the difference between a piano and a fish? What do you get when you cross a shark and a snowman? Which part of a fish weighs the most?
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