A mother-daughter hiking duo came across an unexpected and unpleasant discovery when they were enjoying one of their many adventures through an urban wilderness area just outside of Halifax.
“I was pretty sure it was coyote poop. When we looked closer at it, it had some plastic in it which is something I’ve never seen before. I’ve seen a lot of plastic around but I never thought that the animals would actually eat it,” Sophie Kent-Purcell said, a 16-year-old nature enthusiast.
Caught off guard, the pair examined the scat closer and realized there was indeed plastic embedded into it.
Blue Mountain – Birch Cove Lakes attracts visitors from across the region to its expansive wilderness area the size of the Halifax peninsula.
For Sophie, it’s a haven of fresh air and wildlife spotting that she embraces with open arms.
“It’s very diverse, like the different entrances you go in, there’s a lot of different woods, lakes and like, some barrens, which are nice,” she said.
That is why she was disheartened to find animal scat ingrained with plastic.
For retired wildlife biologist Bob Bancroft, the discovery is unfortunately not surprising.
“I’ve seen lots of plastic poop in other animals like bear. So, one of the things here is people discard plastic and it’s become a major problem in the world,” Bancroft said.
Bancroft is president of Nature Nova Scotia, a federation of naturalist clubs from across the province.
He says while many people associate harms caused by plastics with the ocean, it’s an issue that negatively impacts ecosystems around the world.
“There’s about 18 billion pounds of plastic that end up in the oceans every year. They start off on the land and they dry up, and they crack a little, and they get washed, or blown, into our rivers, and streams, and lakes,” Bancroft said.
He said in the case of the “plastic poop” Sophie and her mother came across, it likely was connected to litter humans left behind, which attracted animals.
“I suspect that something smelly got mixed in,” he said.
Overall, Bancroft said his hope is that people consider how to leave the wilderness just as they found it, whenever they head out to enjoy it.
“There’s definitely a factor associated with a lot of human use. The important thing, really, is that people think about what they’re doing when they’re in there,” Bancroft said.
Kent-Purcell is going to include the plastic scat discovery as part of a youth-led project that researches environmental issues.
“I’m just looking at all the different animal signs there are here in Birch Cove and trying to figure out what kind of animals are here and whether the humans are impacting them,” she said.
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