Take Out the Trash

February 4, 2009 by admin

Our Outdoors
Nick Simonson

Moments like this are more worthwhile when you're not surrounded by trash

As the snow has melted away – once, twice, and now for the third time this spring – sportsmen are able to get out on area shorelines for some great early season fishing. What they are often confronted with on the trip is a reminder of how uncivilized we are as a society. Nowhere is this more evident than on the shores of my home water, the Sheyenne River.

Each spring, the banks are littered with pop bottles, chip bags, Styrofoam cups, plastic containers, beer cans, and my personal pet peeve, spent fishing line. The accumulation is tough to ignore as the neon greens and blues of various plastic and aluminum objects jut out from the beige winter-killed grasses or bob in the foam-filled eddies. It’s even harder to disregard when coils of monofilament tangle and trip anglers on their way to and from the local honey hole.

We All Live Downstream

I hope each time I pick up a weather-worn bottle, or a cup with the local pizza joint’s logo on it, that it wasn’t left in this spot by an angler. I know most fishermen are courteous and respect not only nature, but the rights of the anglers that follow after them. Much of the problem lies upstream.

Anytime a beer can is hurled out a car window into a ditch on a Friday night, it has to go somewhere. Anytime a piece of litter is thrown in the gutter instead of a garbage can, it has a chance of making it into the water.

The adage “treat all land as if it was your own” doesn’t seem to be in practice anymore, as I have seen stretches of private shoreline littered with crushed cans and other garbage which make it appear that the tenants, users or owners were too lazy or not concerned enough to put litter in its place. Eventually, those items end up downstream, whisked into the water by wind or carried away by elevated flows. I find garbage that piles up downstream to be an overall aesthetic nightmare, but for the animals it affects, it can be a death sentence.

Killer Trash

The biggest reason to pick up trash is to preserve the wildlife that live in, on and around our waters. I can recall several examples when fishing where animals have been impacted by discarded garbage that injured them and hindered their survival.

The most memorable – as it spurred my hatred for “line-strippers” who rip the line off their reels and let it lay at the water’s edge – involved a robin tangled in yards of monofilament. The bird was caught in a mess of thick blue line which bound his already mangled leg to the end of a tree branch.

The bird struggled to free itself in vain and tried harder as I approached with the tiny scissors drawn on my Swiss Army knife. He pecked at my hand as I cut several of the loops that bit into his foot and leg. Finally freed, he flew a few feet away and hobbled off, foot nearly severed from his body. I only hoped that it would heal well enough for him to survive and that I would never have to do that again, mostly because it was a pathetic display of what lazy anglers can do to the environment, and partly because those buggers sting like a bee when they’re frightened.

Time and again, animals get caught in fishing line and plastics such as six-pack rings. Many of them aren’t as fortunate as the robin to escape and continue living. Most are doomed to die a slow, horrible death resulting from starvation or inability to process ingested trash discarded upstream.

Get Committed

The animals you pursue for sport such as walleye, ducks, deer, bass, fox, and more are all subject to your actions. The animals you enjoy watching: eagles, songbirds, mink, and more are all subject to the mess left behind. Animals thousands of miles away, such as manatees, porpoises, whales, ocean fish, osprey, grizzly bears and more are all subject to the trash that washes downstream from the gutter to the gulf.

Your actions dictate the future. Join me in making this spring the season you begin or renew your commitment to being a better steward of your local environment, whether its Devils Lake or Dickinson Dike. Make the pledge to pick up just one extra piece of litter each day, be it on the shore or on the sidewalk. Then put it where it belongs.

We owe it to ourselves, to generations of future outdoors enthusiasts and to everyone and everything that lives downstream…in our outdoors.