You can’t go birding without seeing trash. Plastic bags, take-out containers, bottles, tires, shopping carts, the list goes on and on, with face masks being the latest addition to the pile. It’s a waste stream in our streams, rivers, roadsides, neighborhoods and parks. Trash is unsightly and it harms wildlife.

The magnitude of the trash problem in our area was exemplified by a recent post on the social network Nextdoor by Roland Brady. (Roland Brady is a Parkway Foundation Mile Steward and frequently posts about trash cleanups.)  Roland’s post described the efforts, in early October, by an inter-agency group consisting of Reclamation District 1000, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, and the American River Flood Control District. In a project lasting three days and using heavy equipment, this consortium removed 38,000 lbs. of debris from the floodplain of Steelhead Creek between W. El Camino Avenue bridge and the confluence with Arcade Creek. (The source of the trash was from multiple homeless camps in the area.)

While we’ll have to leave the heavy lifting to these agencies, we can make a dent in the trash pile. The American River Parkway Foundation organizes several cleanup days per month. Sacramento Picks It Up! is a public group on Facebook that regularly organizes trash pickup days. The Sacramento Area Creeks Council’s website is an excellent resource for finding organized trash pickup events or for practicing “random acts of clean-up” with suggested neighborhoods, creeks and parks needing attention. You might even consider picking up trash while you are birding. To help you locate organized trash pickup days, SAS will be adding this activity to our Calendar of Events.

-Daphne Reimer