post

Elephants & Plastic

Wild life vet Jerry Haigh writes “Meanwhile three elephants in Chobe National Park died after eating trash from the Chobe landfill.”

A senior Wildlife Biologist, Mr Keagapetse Mosugelo said the elephants died as a result of plastics they ate in the landfill.

“The situation at the landfill is not good for animals,”

he said, adding that the electric fence that has been installed is not sufficient as birds will still flying in to eat waste.

Chobe, which is a fascinating park that lies right in the north of Botswana, is one of the areas on the continent where elephants have created their own min-deserts as they are so abundant that have almost eaten themselves out of house and home.

El morgo s photo rubbish elephants illustrates the point. This is why I boycott plastic.

 

Birds & Plastic

Black footed Albatross (Sileo et al 1990)

Northern Fulmar (van Franeker. 1985. 2003. 2005)

Herring Gull Great Black-backed Gull (Day et al. 1985)

A large Sugar Gum tree branch fell down in the local school over summer. I had a look and in the branches was a dead magpie and a nest. There was plastic tangled around the magpie’s foot. It looks as though the parents used some plastic in the building of the nest. When the youngster grew up he became tangled and couldn’t fly. He must have starved to death, hanging upside down by his foot.

words and photo Originally uploaded by Geoffmo

Brown Booby, the commonest of the boobies alon...

Brown Booby, the commonest of the boobies along Panama’s coasts. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jennifer L. Lavers, Jarrod C. Hodgson, Rohan H. Clarke, Prevalence and composition of marine debris in Brown Booby (Sula leucogaster) nests at Ashmore Reef, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 77, Issues 1–2, 15
December 2013, Pages 320-324, ISSN 0025-326X, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2013.09.026

(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X13005778)
Abstract: Anthropogenic debris is ubiquitous in the marine environment
and has been reported to negatively impact hundreds of species globally.
Seabirds are particularly at risk from entanglement in debris due to
their habit of collecting food and, in many cases, nesting material off
the ocean’s surface. We compared the prevalence and composition of
debris in nests and along the beach at two Brown Booby (Sula
leucogaster) colonies on Ashmore Reef, Timor Sea, a remote area known to
contain high densities of debris transported by ocean currents. The
proportion of nests with debris varied across islands (range 3–31%),
likely in response to the availability of natural nesting materials.
Boobies exhibited a preference for debris colour (white and black), but
not type. The ephemeral nature of Brown Booby nests on Ashmore Reef may
limit their utility as indicators of marine pollution, however
monitoring is recommended in light of increasing demand for plastic
products.
Keywords: Brown Booby; Marine debris; Nesting ecology; Plastic
pollution; Sula leucogaster; Timor Sea

 

 

More

More reports on other animal deaths can be found here

post

Plastics & Birds

Click here for the slide show

A Dutch study in the North Sea of fulmar seabirds concluded 95 per cent of the birds had plastic in their stomachs. More than 1600 pieces were found in the stomach of one bird in Belgium.

Since his first encounter with the gyre in 1997, Moore created the Algalita Marine Research Foundation to help study the problem. Canadian filmmaker Ian Connacher joined Moore last year to film the garbage patch for his documentary, I Am Plastic.

“The most menacing part is those little bits of plastic start looking like food for certain animals, or the filter feeders don’t have any choice, they just pick them up,” noted Connacher.

Perhaps an even bigger problem is hiding beneath the surface of the islands of garbage. Greenpeace reports that about 70 per cent of the plastic that makes it to the ocean sinks to the bottom, where it then smothers marine life on the ocean floor. Dutch scientists have found 600,000 tons of discarded plastic on the bottom of the North Sea alone.

A study by the Japanese geochemist Hideshige Takada and his colleagues at Tokyo University in 2001 found that plastic polymers soak up the resilient poisons such as DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls. The researchers found that non-water-soluble toxic chemicals can be found in plastic in levels as high as a million times their concentration in water. As small pieces of plastic are mistaken for fish eggs and other food by marine life, these toxins end up at the dinner table. But even without the extra toxins, eating plastic is hazardous to health.

see http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/12/are-there-reall.html

 

Find  plastic free products with the >>>A-Z<<< plastic free index