Our wildlife team have seen first-hand how all animals, not just marine life and sea birds suffer prolonged suffering from entanglement in anything from fishing lines and hooks to plastic packaging. 

“We’ve treated land birds like an Egyptian Goose with gut so tightly wound around her legs that it was painfully restricting blood flow to her extremities and a Hadeda in the exact same predicament. Entanglement is common during nesting season when birds seek out material to build and line their nests,” 

says Wildlife Inspector Jon Friedman. 

“Marine mammals like Cape Fur Seals often get hooked on fishing hooks or entangled in packing tape and fishing line which over time causes deep strangulating wounds. We’ve also treated a terrapin that swallowed a fishing line hook and all but it sadly died as a result of its injuries.” 

says Jon.

Many wild animals ingest plastic and other waste with devastating consequences.

They don’t have the ability to discern between a potentially harmful substance and food. To them, if it looks like food, smells like food or behaves like food – it’s food! In the ocean, filter-feeding animals can ingest plastic accidently while sunfish or turtles can mistake plastic bags for a jellyfish meal. Scavengers like seagulls regularly consume plastic which previously held human food. They are unable to digest plastic which means it remains in their gut, makes them feel full and they essentially starve to death. And all of this suffering can be prevented by the responsible use of plastics and the responsible disposal of waste.