Category: Sustainability

Source: Department of Conservation

When we think of summer we think long, hot days, beaches, BBQs, swimming, relaxing, family and mates, right? Summer is very much a relaxing carefree time of year, where well-prepared meals become simple platters and where the attire of jandals and togs gets you just about anywhere.

Over summer though, we can sometimes let this care-FREE vibe turn into a care-LESS one and unfortunately we’re seeing this more and more, in the form of rubbish popping up in all the wrong places.

A real kick in the guts.

I guess, around this time of year there’s more people out, who have more stuff and unfortunately, more stuff sometimes means more waste. Partnered with a care-LESS summer attitude, this can often mean disaster for our special places and species!

Here are a few examples of the impact of disgarded rubbish – Warning! Some images may be disturbing

Our rangers from the Otago Coastal team sent us a bunch of images of plastic waste impacting our fur seals and sea lions. They had so many images, they ended up creating a slide show to depict just how big of an issue this is for their team. We only selected a few images to share, take a look at these…

Pretty sad, huh!

Our rangers were called out to help detangle and remove nets and plastics caught around both seals and sea lions. Some animals were in poor health, unable to feed and behave normally due to their situation, and even though they were released, it’s unclear as to weather or not they survived or managed to get back to full health.

Marine debris, or rubbish that winds up in the sea (plastics and discarded nets) and can be lethal to seals. If you see plastic rubbish (especially in the shape of a ring – or seal sized necklace) pick it up and securely put it in a rubbish bin.

Sticking with Coastal Otago, we all know the issue of plastic ingestion by our seabirds. An issue we’ve been making known this year, with our Royal Cam live stream.

When the birds eat plastic (which they can’t digest) their stomach remains full and because they feel full, they eat less of the food that they crucially need, resulting in poor nutrition while slowly starving.

Here is an image of the regurgitated plastic from one of the chicks this past season.

Thousands of seabirds die in the northern hemisphere each year from swallowing small pieces of plastic. Although it is thought to be less of a problem in New Zealand, we’re seeing an increase in regurgitated plastics found beside royal albatross nests, which, for the reasons above, is a worry.

If you’re out on or near our coastal waters it’s important that you are mindful of what you’re doing and how you’re doing things. If you’re exploring rockpools or fishing off the rocks, don’t leave plastic bottles, fishing lines, fishing lures and floats lying around. Surging waves, especially around the change of tide, can easily wash your things off the rocks and out to sea.

Making sure your fishing gear is in good condition and only using suitable gear will help reduce the chance of accidentally loosing equipment, and adopting the attitude of carring out what you carry in is a good guideline to reduce the chance of leaving anything behind.

Obviously, if you see disgarded gear, rubbish or plastic around the coast, that isn’t yours, pick it up and dispose of it at your nearest bin.

The cheeky kea are always up to mischief, getting into things they’re not meant to be getting into, but sometimes their mischievious nature will mean that they find themselves in serious trouble.

Our Glenorchy team sent in this image of a kea with rope or twine tightly wrapped around it’s foot.

Kea are incredibly resourceful and intelligent and will use their beak and feet as tools to help them feed, nest and crucially fight off pest and predators. A compromise to one of their tools puts them at serious risk of being predated on or not being able to carry out normal behaviours.

It’s unknown how long this kea was tangled for, but one of the rangers managed to catch the kea and carefully remove the string. The ranger noticed that the string was tightly wound and could’ve been effecting the bird’s circulation. – As far a kea go, this one was a very thin, gaunt looking bird. Not plump at all, like the others. From this, we know that the string definitely effected the kea’s health and we were glad to have removed it.

If you’re going to be in places where kea are around make sure you follow these tips

• Never feed kea.
• Avoid leaving temptations around such as lose clothing, boots, packs, food and brightly coloured objects.
• Make sure you’re rubbish is secure, disposed of properly or put away safely, until you can appropriately dispose it.

Our team from the Auckland Inner Islands found a Patiki with a red cream container plastic ring wrapped around its neck and stuck in it’s bill. It took three of our team members to catch the bird, remove the plastic ring and release it.

Luckily for our feathered friend it didn’t seem like it had the ring around its neck for long, showing minimal signs of exhaustion and health issues, while giving the team a bit of a fight during the rescue.

In Lyall Bay, Wellington, a local came across a dead mature male rig (commonly known as a lemon-shark or spotted dog-fish).

As you can see it looks like plastic of some sort, perhaps a coke bottle or something similar, stuck around its neck, covering it’s gills. This is most likley the cause of it’s death and it’s assumed that the plastic bottle part had been around the neck of the shark for awhile and that as the shark grew, the bottle suffocated it.

The reason why we’re sharing these, sometime hard to look at images and telling you the stories of what our rangers come across on a daily basis, is to stress the point that your actions, no matter where you are, can have a significant impact on wildlife. Its our collective job to look after our special spaces and species and a simple action of disposing your rubbish correctly helps protect our much loved natural treasures.

TIP – When you plan to head out into nature, be ready to carry your rubbish with you.

• When heading into the bush, you’re likely to travel through remote areas where it might be a while before you can find a bin.

• Make your trip easier by minimising the amount of waste you produce. When you’re planning your trip, remove the packaging and pack food and other supplies into reusable containers.

• Take a bag or a container that you can use to store your rubbish. Air-tight containers (like ice-cream containers) are ideal.

The common thread in all these stories that we shared, was that our DOC rangers had to be called out to help wildlife. Yes, it’s a part of our job and we love helping out where we can, but to be called out to a wildlife rescue, simply because someone didn’t dispose of their rubbish properly, seems like something that shouldnt really be an increasing issue in Aotearoa.

Being a tidy kiwi has always been the way and we can’t let that standard slip.

The truth is that there are other important, critial jobs and wildlife rescues that need our urgent atttention, and spending our time on easily preventable issues like these ones (though valuable and worth it) seems like a bit of a waste.

So, please, this holiday period, enjoy your breakout in nature but remember to protect our wildlife and natural spaces by not adopting a care-LESS attitude when it comes to your rubbish.