More Oceanic Garbage Patches Found

  • Marine researcher Marcus Eriksen says the plastic packaging that wraps nearly all consumer products is killing some marine animals.(Photo courtesy of the NOAA Marine Debris Program)

A giant field of plastic debris is floating in the middle of the northern Pacific Ocean. Now researchers are finding more of these garbage patches in other Oceans. Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

A giant field of plastic debris is floating in the middle of the northern Pacific Ocean. Now researchers are finding more of these garbage patches in other Oceans. Mark Brush has more:

Researchers say there are ocean currents that sort of swirl around like water in a toilet bowl. There called oceanic gyres.

The Algalita Marine Research Foundation was one of the groups that documented the problem in the North Pacific Ocean. This year they sailed to the gyres in the North Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean.

They found miles and miles of plastic fishing line, milk crates, spoons and forks, and bits of plastic bags.

Marcus Eriksen is with the group:

Eriksen: I challenge you to walk into Wal-Mart or a K-Mart and find a product that’s not made from plastic, packaged or labeled with plastic. And we’re finding more and more of this debris being lost onto the ground washing down rivers and streams out to sea.

Eriksen says the plastic is killing some marine animals. Fish, birds, turtles, and whales get tangled up in the mess – or they mistake it for food.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Hotlines for Wild Animal Rescue

  • Possums pretty much just want to be left alone – and they let you know by opening their mouths full of teeth. It’s called an alligator gape. (Photo by Patti Roman)

Let’s say you find a baby chipmunk that fell

out of a tree… or worse, you hit an animal with your car.

Who do you call? Rebecca Williams has the story of people

who feel it’s their duty to nurse these animals back to health…

and get them back to the wild:

Transcript

Let’s say you find a baby chipmunk that fell out of a tree… or worse, you hit an animal with your car. Who do you call? Rebecca Williams has the story of people who feel it’s their duty to nurse these animals back to health… and get them back to the wild:


(sound of phone ringing)


“Thank you for calling the Friends of Wildlife hotline for squirrels, chipmunks and other small rodents. If you have rescued a small animal please keep it warm and quiet…” (beep)

There are hotlines like these set up all over the country. There are bunny hotlines, woodchuck hotlines… you name it and there’s a volunteer hotline for it.

The woman who answers the Possum Hotline is Patti Roman. She volunteers in Michigan. She has a basement full of baby possums.

“Mom has 13 babies so if you get a weekend where two or three moms are hit I’ll get a lot of babies in a few days.”

She says possums get hit by cars a lot. They love to eat roadkill, and they’ll just sit there in the middle of the road, staring at your headlights.

Possums are marsupials like kangaroos. Except they don’t hop out of the way. They keep their babies in their pouches. When a mom gets hit, a lot of times the babies will survive. Someone will find the babies and call the Possum Hotline.

Patti Roman says she’s had up to a hundred baby possums in her basement at one time.

She puts gloves on before she pulls a possum out of its terrarium. I don’t know if you know possums, but they look like a huge hairy rat on its worst day. But this baby possum is kinda cute. He’s giving us a sharp-toothed little grin. It’s a I’ll-rip-your-hand off kind of grin.

“He’s doing the alligator gape right now. But he’s not biting me, but he is trying to scare me.”

That mouth full of sharp teeth is your first clue that possums just want to be left alone. If your dog chases after one, the possum might play dead. Then it’ll get up and waddle off when you’re not looking.

Patti Roman takes care of the possums until they’re a few months old. Then she takes them into the woods and lets them go. She says wildlife is always better off in the wild. But she says she does get criticized for interfering with nature.

“A possum who gets hit by a car is not supposed to die. It has nothing to do with natural selection. And if we can help I think we should.”

But some scientists debate that. Jim Harding is a wildlife specialist at Michigan State University.

“I think the majority of rehabilitation efforts is often just based on a human need to care for things. It isn’t really related to conservation unless you’re dealing with a very rare species.”

Harding says rehabbing some types of common animals can actually make things worse. For example – he says there are so many raccoons that they can wipe out a lot of birds because they eat their eggs.

But Patti Roman says she really feels like she’s doing the right thing. She spent 18 years at the Humane Society rescuing dogs and cats. But she never knew for sure those animals would be placed in good homes.

“When you call to check on the animal a year later – it’s been given away or run away or accidentally been killed. It was breaking my heart. And after awhile I thought, you know, I enjoy doing the wild animals because when they’re ready to go I’m not dependent on people anymore. It feeds my soul. It really does. I do this and I feel very, very good every morning that I can save a life.”

She says when she lets the possums go they don’t look back. They just take off into the woods. And even if that little possum ends up getting eaten by a fox, Roman says that’s okay, because at least that’s natural.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

New Polar Bear Rule for Oil

  • Oil companies are legally protected from any accidental harm caused by trucks, boats and experiments that alter the polar bear’s environment (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Just when you thought polar bears in the United States were safe under the Endangered Species Act… they’re facing a new threat. The Bush Administration has announced regulations that allow oil companies to harass polar bears while they explore for oil off the coast of Alaska. Richie Duchon has more:

Transcript

Just when you thought polar bears in the United States were safe under the Endangered Species Act… they’re facing a new threat. The Bush Administration has announced regulations that allow oil companies to harass polar bears while they explore for oil off the coast of Alaska. Richie Duchon has more:

Oil companies can’t kill polar bears. That still brings a penalty. But they are legally protected from any accidental harm caused by trucks, boats and experiments that alter the polar bear’s environment.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Bruce Woods says oil exploration is not much to worry about.

“Believe me, you won’t find more concern for the polar bear anywhere than you will in this office, but we just don’t really believe that this activity at this level poses any significant threat. The threat to the polar bear is the loss of sea ice.”

Environmental groups are furious. They say the loss of sea ice from global warming is a threat to the polar bear, but they say we need to minimize other threats with a moratorium on oil exploration.

For The Environment Report, I’m Richie Duchon.

Related Links