A picture is worth a thousand words.... and a thousand reasons for action

The picture was black and white, contrasting to the glossy paper of the new book. Twelve grey wolves hung upside down from their hind feet, tied to hooks on the side of a simple shack covered in snow. Two more of the lifeless creatures sat in the snow, legs tied, ready to be hung up alongside their brothers. The caption told me that these wolves were captured as part of the Minnesota government predator control program. As a nine-year old in my elementary school library, it was this picture in The Wolf Almanac (Robert H. Busch) that I looked at for what could have been hours.

The pictures of adorable wolf puppies with blue eyes or majestic adults striking mysterious poses did not affect me the way this picture did nor has any since. Years later, I would purchase this book not for the information it gave but because of the picture I knew that was in it. This picture is what set my path. I fell in love with wolves at that moment that I first had seen the photo. The wolves lost in an eternal run from their aggressors tacked to a wall would change my life. From then on I knew that I would have to do something to help these animals that I felt had undergone such injustice.

It would be many years before I realized that I could use my writing to help not just wolves but the environment as a whole as an environmental journalist. As I enter college as a freshman in the fall, I have not had opportunity to explore this theory fully. Yet, I have done what I felt that I could (although I know I could have done much more). I wrote the green column for my high school paper, telling students how they could help the environment without spending money, “Go green without spending Green” was my motto.

Copyright - Chris Jordan

There are many stories to tell of my love affair with wolves, with writing, and my evolution into a green guru among friends. But recently, I encountered photos that wrenched at my heart very similarly to that of the wolves hanging on the wall. In reading my main source of news, Treehugger.com, I stumbled upon a set of slideshows titled “164 Photos to Change Your World, One Shot At a Time”. One of these slideshows “An Ocean of Plastic… In Birds’ Guts” did in fact change my world.

The collection of photographs taken by Chris Jordan in Midway Island showed the decomposing bodies of ocean birds and the rummage of plastic junk that filled their stomachs.  According to David DeFranza, the photos are of birds that “have been fed plastic litter by confused parents. “ Picture after picture shows the same basic idea, tearing at your heartstrings with every click to the next slide. Shocked, I showed the first few shots to my mother. “Where did all the plastic come from?” she asked.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the answer. But the larger answer is that we have fed those birds the plastic bottle caps and the empty lighters. A short explanation is that our plastic garbage makes its way to the ocean from garbage dumps. When the plastic reaches the ocean, the currents bring it to the North Pacific Gyre (or North Atlantic Gyre if you live on the East Coast). Here, the plastic is forever trapped by currents in a vortex-like patch in the middle of the northern ocean. This “patch” is not a simple freckle on the Earth’s surface; it covers an area that has been estimated to be twice the size of the state of Texas.

You can’t find the patch on Google maps, I have tried many times. There are few books on the subject (none of which I have heard of before combing the internet for them specifically). The subject is simply not in our faces. Like my mother, many Americans will see photos of it or hear of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but most will quickly return to the energy-sapping television sets that were already playing in the background before their pesky tree hugging-hippie daughters interrupted with disturbing images. Many will call this a flaw that scars Americans, but a lot of people simply can’t engage or become emotional about something that doesn’t directly affect them.

This is why I set out to learn more about these birds, their lives, and the great garbage dump that we have created with our careless consumption and tossing of waste. I hope to find out more, maybe even see it for myself. I want to learn more about this human error and what I can do to help.