Now RSPCA backs Spring Clean
THE RSPCA has backed the Great British Spring Clean following thousands of reports of animals trapped in lockdown litter.
The charity revealed that despite Britons going out less because of the pandemic, it still took almost 4,000 calls about creatures stuck in discarded waste in the last year.
These include a gull tangled in a face mask, a hedgehog with its head stuck in a can, a fox caught in an old Cornish pasty wrapper and a gannet entangled in plastic. With an average of more than ten reports per day, the charity is now urging people to get involved with the Great British Spring Clean 2021 – organised by Keep Britain Tidy and supported by the Daily Mail – to help protect animals by picking up discarded waste. Adam Grogan, head of the RSPCA’s wildlife department, said: ‘Litter is one of the biggest hazards our wildlife faces today and the pandemic has just added to the problem with many disposable masks just being discarded on the ground.
‘These are a new danger to animals and we’ve been called out to rescue animals… caught up in the masks’ elastic straps.’
As well as everyday rubbish, the RSPCA has also recorded many animals arriving into its care with terrible injuries caused by discarded angling equipment – such as discarded fishing line, hooks and plastic netting.
Nearly 40 per cent of all litterrelated calls last year were about animals that had specifically become caught in fishing litter, from a seal being strangled by old nets to dozens of swans who swallowed fishing hooks.
The Great British Spring Clean was launched this week with the annual litter-picking drive running from May 28 to June 13.
The Daily Mail encourages readers to ‘pledge to pick’ and help clear the plight of pandemic rubbish. Environment minister Rebecca Pow said the Spring Clean would ‘set the tone’ as Britain comes out of lockdown.
Last year more than half a million people signed up for the nationwide litter pick – which was delayed until September due to lockdown restrictions.
Meanwhile, researchers warned that the plastic pollution pandemic now reaches ‘from the tops of the mountains to the bottom of the sea’ after a camel found dead in Dubai had more than 2,000 plastic bags in its stomach.
Discarded rubbish is to blame for 1 per cent of camel deaths in the UAE in the last decade, the 5 Gyres Institute – set up to reduce plastic pollution – had found.
More than 300 camels died with polybezoars – a tightly packed collection of indigestible materials – in their stomachs as large as 63.6kg, which is the equivalent of six car tyres.