Cane Bay Clean up...

September 28th saw some CMNA volunteers participate in this trash collection effort!
Several months ago, it came to my attention that the animal and bird rescue volunteer that covers the Cane Bay and surrounding areas was being overwhelmed with rescue calls for birds injured and tangled in fishing line, fishing hooks, and trash.

Donna Dorner, a federally licensed rescuer and rehabber for the Carolina Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, has been a friend of mine for a while, and when I saw her make a plea to the Cane Bay community to help her help the wildlife in the area, it got my attention.

This last summer, she was getting 10-15 calls A WEEK about injured and tangled birds in the Cane Bay area. Her request on Facebook to help pick up trash went unheeded, and keep in mind, Donna has a full time job!

Why would picking up trash be so important to her? Take a look at these photos...every one of these rescues was necessary because of discarded trash, fishing line, and hooks. A totally avoidable situation if the people throwing theses things away, just took time to not.

Many of these bird were rescued and rehabbed. Almost as many didn't make it.

Not just birds, either. Turtles get caught in the hooks, too.

The turtle survived, by the way!

So, what to do? After meeting with Donna at the end of August, I reached out to Nicki Turano, our Events Chair, and asked if there was any chance of organizing a trash pick up before the end of September, and are there any other organizations we could collaborate with? The answer to both questions was yes!

Nicki reached out to CMNA past Board Member Linda Rowe who does stellar work with the South Carolina Aquarium working on outreach to clean up trash!! Perfect.

A meeting with Linda, Donna, and myself ensued, a date picked, and an event created, culminating in yesterday's program!

80 people registered to help after posting our Cane Bay Clean Up event on the neighbourhood social media pages, and just over half that number showed up to participate!

It was a huge success and we picked up enough trash to fill a large pick up truck twice over!

One of our neighbours even organized free refreshments and snacks for the volunteers!

So, good news all round! I just wanted to say a personal thank you to those members that volunteered your time to leave your own neighbourhood and help one in need, and also to Nicki for helping put this together and especially to Linda and her colleague from the South Carolina Aquarium that also came out and gave us the necessary supplies, knowledge, and tracking for citizen science that made this program a success!

It's this caring and active community of members that makes our organization so special, so please, if you see a need somewhere, reach out to one of your Board members. What we do makes a difference!