My forestry field work gives me the opportunity to see land that is off the beaten path, away from the bustling cities, and sometimes far removed from public roads. Sometimes I can work all day without seeing the stray trash left behind by careless (or lawbreaking) humans.
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There is one type of trash that has become nearly impossible to escape. I'm talking about balloons. Yes, those festive, helium-filled balloons so popular at parties and other events. Releasing them into the sky is irresistable. People can't help but watch them float away, perhaps wondering how far they will travel, and where they might return to earth.
Well, I have the answer to the last question. They return to earth randomly; and upon their return they are converted from festive globes to common trash. Out in stretches of forest where nobody has set foot in months or years, I see their deflated remains with alarming regularity.
Mother Nature does not need birthday greetings
For the past few days, I've been working on a privately owned forest, located roughly 50 miles southeast of Atlanta. First I made a map by visiting the corners and walking the creeks with a GPS unit. Then I took a forest inventory plot on a square grid of 360 feet, which translates into one plot per three acres.
Shortly after arriving there, I found an old balloon in the woods. I decided to keep track of how many I saw. Here are the results:
March 7: 2
March 8: 1
March 9: 0
March 10: 0
March 15: 2
March 16: 1
March 18: 2
On the 15th, as I drove out the woods road at day's end, I spied a partially inflated purple balloon that had not been there that morning. A fresh arrival!
Total: 8 balloons in 7 days. The total land ownership is roughly one square mile. Let's make the very wild, highly implausible assumption that I saw every balloon on the property. And let's make the equally implausible assumption that this square mile is representative of the 59,425 square miles of land and water in the state of Georgia. This translates into 475,400 balloons littering the state of Georgia.
In reality, the number is likely to be one or two orders of magnitude higher.
Each balloon that is innocently released becomes somebody's trash. Whether it ends up on public land, private land, or on water, the result is the same. Your pretty balloon has become somebody else's problem. Or even worse, nature's problem.
Mother Nature is not having a nice day.
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