any updates?
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Duck. Death, and Plastic; a sequel to the children's story, Duck, Death, and the Tulip, by Wolf Erlbruch. The duck's dance with death has begun.
A couple years ago, the company that makes Glucerna (for diabetics) replaced their sensible 6-pack recyclable cardboard carton with plastic rings & shrink-wrapped their plastic bottles with yet another layer of plastic applied, apparently, to provide us with an illustration of what we're drinking (as if we didn't know) and to afix legally required list of ingredients on each bottle. Since bottles are not sold individually, this is an exercise in futility, as the ingredients list was just fine on the former cardboard six-pack holder. It should be made federal law that unless a corporation--foreign or domestic--can package their goods in easily recyclable material that they will no longer be able to sell their product until they figure the problem out. We would see many a swift solution to all this stupid, wasteful, destructive planning.
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Please let us know what happens.
We are all pulling for you little duck!
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It is so sad when our environment and wildlife are affected by our actions and refusal to stop creating materials that can harm animals. This situation teaches a lesson on considering our environment and wildlife when throwing out or buying products which can be harmful. I hope this little bird will be okay and freed of this ring so that he will be able to eat and thrive.
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Hang in there, little duck! We want to help you. This human is sorry that plastic waste produced by my fellow humans is hurting you. I’m sorry you were victimized by man-made pollution and waste. Pollution hurts us all and, right now, it’s hurting you.
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Snip every ring before discarding. It's not difficult, just thoughtless or lazy not to. People wouldn't have a loop near their crib, nor would they - the smarter ones anyway - perform active sports with a loop of material anywhere about them; even the little ones attached to a zipper can strangle you in a bad situation, or hang you upside down in a tree (by the cutesy little bow tying their boots on!). Paranoia? No, just being careful thanks to someone else, or some poor dumb animal, having had such a miserable experience.
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Don't buy. Don't dump. Pick up when you see it. Easy.
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Too much discarded plastic in our oceans —runoff means if you throw it in the street, it ends up in water, rivers, lakes, and eventually the ocean. The same is true for cigarette butts. Smokers, please don’t throw your butts in the street! The filters are loaded with chemicals that pollute the water.
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Yes, let's make this individual animal a symbol of the greater problem, if it will help. The fact that Common mergansers aren't "rare" is immaterial and a distraction. As a lifelong birder, I'm always tempted to point out erroneous bird facts in the media along with my fellow birders, but it doesn't help with the problem of how to keep avian species alive in a world that's trying to edge them out of existence. Sometimes we need powerful images i.e. a tearful native American man scanning a trashed landscape, a sad-eyed baby fur seal, to stimulate compassion and galvanize our efforts. Those symbols changed a lot of minds and habits back in the day.
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@JPKetz I agree we need those images to stimulate compassion, but that doesn't mean we can't also ask for greater precision in reporting. The two are not mutually exclusive.
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Hopefully people will treat this as a wake-up call. We need to drastically reduce or eliminate single-use plastic in our daily lives and HOLD COMPANIES ACCOUNTABLE for the plastic waste they create.
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Or, at the very least, get people to stop dropping their garbage everywhere and wait until they reach a trash can.
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@B. that won't stop this issue. Plastic in a landfill blows into rivers, lakes, streams, and the ocean. Better to not produce the stuff in the first place, or recycle, if you must purchase.
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@Ben
Right. Some “company” dumped the plastic after using it. Now that I think about it, was probably trump.
So as a nation can we outlaw this frivolous plastic? We don't need plastic bags, or rings....please people make conscious decisions. I just told the publix cashier, I quit buying their dessert bc of plastic one piece 5 minutes for 300 years in the landfill....I've asked them to use cardboard like WF but nope they don't see the need. One day we consumers will get to them.
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Poor bird. Please stop throwing away trash into the lake. Be kind to Mother Nature.
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Think Nyc Parks should contact WCS, Central Park Zoo professionals. They know how to “ rescue” animals safely, & return to environment.
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Common mergansers are not rare.
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The whole issue of plastic and birds is sickening and heartbreaking. If you have ever seen a bolus of plastic from an albatross chick, you never forget it. Plastic is killing our wildlife. As one commentor observed, it is incomprehensible that people can throw plastic away without a thought to the consequences.
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You’d think people in one of the most “woke” places in the country would “get it”. Let me help out. Ban ALL plastic and glass from the park. Put a big deposit on all one use throw away containers and plastics. Fixed. Of coarse we can’t do that. Not in NYC or Idaho. Why? Because business might suffer. You might have to bring a reusable thermo cup for your star bucks. The horror!!. Poor African countries can set aside land and live with dangerous animals and ban plastic bags but we can’t even do the easy stuff. Let’s not hear any more whining about how we’re aren’t fixing big things like climate change and oceans filling with plastic, when we can’t even do small things that require a tiny bit of sacrifice.
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@AT NY will ban plastic shopping bags starting on 1 March 2020. Still, we do need to do more.
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@Mickela
Good for you. It’s a start but like you say, not nearly enough. A local grocery store doesn’t have plastic bags. You HAVE to bring your own. Of coarse across the street is the usual store that does way more business and they will cheerful double bag for you. Given the option most of us do what’s easiest regardless of the consequences. We have to take away that option.
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@AT They don't know where the duck picked up the ring. It could have been anywhere on its travels.
But yeah, we all need to do better all over the world.
Bear in mind this is a duck that is rare in Central Park, but not one that is rare. And it has the dubious distinction of being a major host/spreader of "swimmer's itch", caused by a parasite.
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@Kurfco Does that mean we should kill it?
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I make an effort to cut rings for six packs when I have one, but haven't done the same for bottle rings yet. I will look for some appropriate snippers. What can I do ... pick up everything i see? Ok.
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@Paul S
Pretty much yes. I feel like my community's part time waste manager. Having gloves and small scissors in the bag can be helpful.
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@pealass You're my inspiration!
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@Paul S My question to you is: Why do you feel the need to buy products that use those rings?
In the rush to save this bird, people should realize that birds all over the world are suffering slow, agonizing deaths due to our plastic waste. The fact that it's not happening in the middle of a large city doesn't make their agonies any less of an emergency.
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Update, please!
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Three things that we can all do immediately--1) purchase fewer products made with plastic 2) cut apart any plastic (six pack holders, plastic rings or loops) that can form a trap 3) place all plastic that can be recycled in recycle bins (and never put common trash in those recycle bins as that often makes the whole load unable to be recycled).
We can all do much better.
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Added problem: mergansers are really shy as well. Perhaps this micro example of what is happening on a macro scale, will stimulate action to reduce plastics by our society and societies across the world. Plastics, once hailed as a solution to many problems of packaging, are now the problem. I suggest a sample of the water the merganser is swimming in contains micro plastics; as do all of us today. If climate change doesn't kill us, plastics will.
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The comment about this poor little duck not "taking bread from strangers" is a reminder NOT to feed ducks and wild birds bread! It's food for us, not for them, and if you must feed wild birds do some research as to what is an appropriate food for the birds in your area!
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@Susan Thank you for making this incredibly important point!
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This is so disturbing - thank you for shining a spotlight on this situation which plays out all over the world on a daily basis with animals simply suffering in silence.
Plastic is so ubiquitous these days. I've resolved to use less of it, and look for items packaged in glass and metal. Saying no to items like single use plastic bottles and straws is easy, but challenge yourself to eliminate plastics entirely and you'll be surprised at how difficult this is. Even cars can be 50% plastic by volume. But every little bit really does count; if one person had decided not to drink out of a plastic bottle, the ring of that bottle would not currently be wrapped around this bird's beak.
To capture the little duck, perhaps in addition to people in boats, a scuba diver could be in the water to go after her if she dives?
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To the sweet person who most hopefully suggested a scuba diver, to assist in the rescue, in addition to the boats: this is a wild duck.
It will almost certainly perish of a heart attack at being approached by all these well-meaning humans, on top of the stress it is already
experiencing. Imagine if you woke up to find a wild raccoon in bed with you. Most people would need a sedative. Hopefully the park
rangers have realized this and have done the right thing. And of course they consulted with the zoo’s bird experts. This is New York,
the smartest, most able city in the world.
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@Trunkbay Sometimes the best thing to do is wait until the "patient" is unconscious. If the merganser is being monitored from a distance, rescuers may be able to approach when she gets weaker.
I've been trying to reduce plastics for a while now. It's exceptionally difficult. We don't have choices in so many areas, like women's cosmetics, for example. I see companies changing their packaging to include MORE tiny plastic parts, not fewer. Try to find milk containers without the plastic lift tabs. There are so many areas where companies could easily improve packaging to use less plastic. Why won't they?
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@JVG I agree....and I always cut that little plastic loop on these tabs because I fear it being caught on a beak. It is a tiny step, but I feel I must do something. Like you, I avoid plastic whenever possible. Thank you for trying, too.
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@JVG: great comment! I've thought about this quite a bit. I recycle all the plastic food bags for fresh produce by washing and reuse them until they cannot be used again. I cringe when I purchase a plastic boxed organic baby tomatoes. What can we do about this? Can manufacturers reuse these again? Until we each do our part and voice concerns about this to the companies we purchase from, nothing will be done.
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@amy What an excellent idea! Cutting the plastic loop into several pieces could help too.
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Unfortunately, calling the Common Merganser "rare" is distracting from the main point of the story. Because a bird rarely occurs in a given location does not make it rare.
Plastics (micro and macro) are a growing problem for birds and especially for some groups of birds. The merganser is primarily a piscivore (as the serrations on the beak suggest) and is therefore vulnerable to consuming plastics that either look like their prey or via secondary ingestion - they consume fish that, in turn, ate microplastics. Fish can confuse plastic fibers with the food that they normally eat (small plants and animals) and, end out consuming tiny plastic particles that ultimately end out in the belly of the predator that eats them.
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Really? This is symbolic with the entire planet. Look at all of planet earth's oceans. Look at the Gulf of Mexico. Almost all animal life is choking on plastic, oil, and petroleum based material. People are as well; you just realize it. Microscopic particles in what we eat and breathe. We need to radically change so very much. I believed we passed "The Tipping Point" decades ago. My lovely and brilliant daughter was born the same day Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Although we were living in New York City when she was born (as I had for 3 decades), I was born and raised in Lousiana. We are killing this planet, and every day it gets geometrically worse.
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While the attention being given to this Common Merganser and this story is excellent for spreading the warning about plastic trash in the environment, it's a bit silly to focus on a single duck.
Habitat loss, chemical poisoning, and other environmental degradation is killing many millions of birds every year. While the reality of this is more obscure, its effect is obviously more pernicious than that represented by a single bird.
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@Matthew O'Brien The story about this one bird brings more attention to the issues that birds face. I'm glad the Times is following!
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It is symbolic. I know you pointed this out, but this is truly symbolic for us killing the planet humans are living on. We reap what we sow, and we have reaped far too much. Now it's "payback time". The planet will survive; with or without human life. I am not being negative. This is realism.
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@Tucson Yes, that's the first line of my comment.
I had a very similar experience in northern Florida, except it was a hooded merganser in a pool. A diver, it was difficult to catch but we managed to net it and remove the plastic. The plastic ring was situated exactly like that in this story.
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I just do not understand why so many people are careless and sloppy throwing things like plastic in water where animals live. It happens in the ocean and now in Central Park.
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@Tonjo The problem is they don't. What this is is when people don't dispose of trash properly: maybe they drop that Starbucks straw in the parking lot, and don't pick it up. Or, they throw the plastic bottle in the trash but the lid misses. Then it rains, and it goes into a storm drain, and out into a river or the ocean untreated. Seeing plastic on the street in my neighborhood of Brooklyn bothers me, and there are three things that need to happen.
1. Sanitation needs to provide more trash cans, and empty the ones it has more often. This costs money so we collectively need to pay for it.
2. People need to make better choices about using disposable plastics, and disposing of them.
3. But, the plastics industry needs to be held to account. As a result of cheap LNG it is unfortunately growing, even as we become more aware of damage like this. Taxing the negative externalities an industry produces (classically, a carbon tax is one but there could be others) is the most efficient way to do this and there is no serious academic debate about this, but the plastics industry would instead prefer to distract attention in favor of recycling. In other words: making it your problem, not theirs. Stories like this remind us this is the same pattern of behavior as we saw from Big Tobacco: lies, "choice," and phoney public education plans rather than actually addressing the problem.
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@Tonjo I am not a resident of NYC, but a very frequent visitor of the city. It is appalling to see people walking down a street and just drop their trash on the sidewalk. Totally disgusting. I see it in NYC more than anywhere else. Almost as if it is a right.....
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@Tonjo
Not all litter results from littering. Lots of it just blows out of open trash cans on windy days. Or it tumbles off the back of a truck. Sure, there are malcontents among us who would throw their plastic into the water, but we are all careless and sloppy with how we deal with our refuse on a mass scale, and that is what contributes most to these horrifying scenes.
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But we recycle, don't we?
What a scam that is. Feel good, the three pounds of plastic we bring home that carry our fresh healthy salads, veggies and other foods, our entertainment and personal gadgets of communications, all get so cleanly hidden away out or views that we don't get to think of the effects.
Single, feel good articles have appeared about this scam in NY Times and few other major publications, but we need to see, like nutrition details of food, also the environmental impact score of every product we use. From bubble gum bags to mobile phones and their packaging to large TV monitors should carry an environmental impact rating.
That will go a long way to clean up or at least reduce our abuse of our resources.
Yes, the Bible says that God created all of this for us to live on. But, first, the Bible is just a story book, and two, arithmetic is more powerful than any story. Just add up what each of us discard in plastics and it is clear this is unsustainable.
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@Kamyab somewhere in the Bible it must also say something about loving and respecting the land and resources we were given to live on and with. And yes, story or no story we have been given common sense and humans need to start using it.
Several years ago, I came across a Mallard at Oakland Lake in Queens with a plastic “six-pack beer loop” holding its bill shut. How awful.
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Common Mergansers are not rare, though they may be to Central Park. The accepted conservation rating for the species is of Least Concern which means that the overall population is currently stable and, well, common. The headline of the story should reflect this. Though the story makes valid and timely points about the evils of plastic waste and its effect on wildlife, the headline is more of the click bait type rather than reflective of scientific accuracy. Science is so often under attack; the Times can do better.
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@Beth It's rare for Central Park. C'mon.
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@Beth This story is more about how this animal is being affected by plastic waste caused by humans.
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Rare or not - it doesn't matter. This beautiful, thankfully non-human, creature is suffering because of the disgraceful failed and unfortunately very non rare species - human - homosapien - what you will. We must and are obligated to do everything in our power to save it from what we have collectively done to it. We should earn what little redemption we can in the short time left to us.
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Why wasn’t the zoo involved? They know how to catch & help
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A very sad and distressing sight. Please provide an update so we are not left hanging.
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@A.Tankoos
Yes A. I am worried about this duck now.
2
Plastic is a scourge to man and animal. Get rid of plastic in your homes!
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We have to stop producing and using plastics that do not or cannot get recycled!
To be recycled, the recycling services have to exist AND another plastic producer has to buy it to cycle it again. Ultimately, many plastics have finite number of (re)cycles they can go through.
Thankfully we have some alternatives here in the city like the Greenmarkets, bulk food shopping, Package Free store, Precycle store, etc. Still seeing so many people in the city carrying around single-use plastic drink bottles (even water! Free water!).
Senator Tom Udall’s plastics bill is a step in the right direction. It puts the responsibility back on the plastics producer, aka the fossil fuel companies that make huge profits from selling plastic.
Until the day we can get the bill passed, people can at least try to buy metal or glass when there are the option to do so. Metal and glass can be endlessly recycled, aren’t endocrine disruptions, aren’t made of fossil fuels, and don’t kill animals.
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Sad story. But common mergansers are just that - common. They are far from rare. Its unfortunately a valuable lesson in plastics pollution, but if that bird unfortunately passes due to its affliction it won't be like we lost another Atlantic right whale.
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@mark
True, I saw several male and female common mergansers just this weekend at my local lake in Eastchester NY. They are migrating through no doubt. So they are not rare in these parts, especially at this time of the year.
6
@mark We humans are pretty common too. It affects me when I see another animal suffer, no matter how common, simply because we humans are so selfish and careless. It really hurts. That little bird was just trying to live. Very common animals can become extinct in a very short time due to our human greed and thoughtlessness. It’s happened before. It’s happening right now. If this bird dies it is surely only one of many mergansers that will have met such a painful and untimely death due to our plastic trash. It happens all the time, every day, to more birds than you can imagine. It’s not just one merganser. It’s just the only one people are paying attention to, and therefore it will be easy for people to think that it’s just one bird. That’s wrong. It’s not just one bird.
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The point of the story is not that Common Mergansers are common, it’s that animals gagging on and dying from our plastic trash is common. Making distinctions between the kinds of animals hurt by our trash is a distraction. It’s ALL bad. Every time an animal suffers and dies due to human negligence, it’s a disgrace.
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