WAIMEA — Most people know that plastics polluting the ocean kill thousands of seabirds, Hawaiian monk seals and Pacific loggerhead sea turtles each year. But the same plastics dumped over a fence onto private Waimea pasture land recently killed two cows that ingested them.
“Two of our cows suffered a terrible death,” said Gail Rice, who leases 450 acres with her husband and longtime rancher Freddie Rice for several hundred of their cows next to their 12,500-acre ranch. “We took a picture last week of all this garbage thrown over the fence just below Kamuela. Someone also broke the fence down to make it easier to toss garbage. It’s not too far to drive to the dump, but they just threw it over. We have lots.”
The dumping has been going on for years.
“They dump it any time,” Freddie said. “It’s a very convenient place to throw it and the fence is low.”
Two weeks ago he found two of his female cows dead.
“I saw a cow with the plastic bag in her mouth. They pick it up and chew on it and some gets stuck in their throat,” Freddie said. “It’s easy for people to stop and drop their trash here. Now and then I see families picking up the rubbish, but we don’t want it to be an excuse for people to continue dumping it here.”
Because the ranch is expansive, Gail said it’s difficult to catch the cows and remove plastic from their mouths, if and when they see this occuring.
“The same thing happened several years ago, and I tried to catch the cows but it was impossible,” she said. “Freddy and I were both at the site yesterday and watched a big beautiful cow chew on a hubcap and another cow playing with a box that beer came in. Wouldn’t it be nice if one of the immersion schools had a clean up the aina day?”
According to sources at Parker Ranch and Kahua Ranch, no such problem has happened on their land as far as they know.
The Rices hope that by spreading the word about their cows’ death, residents will cease dumping rubbish on their land and elsewhere.
“Maybe we can help the locals see what happens when they throw garbage, to understand the consequences,” Gail said. “They probably don’t know that it’s killing livestock. Now they’ll hopefully understand how painful this is and how much it’s costing us.”