Lake Fayetteville Cleanup Saturday 10-12 from 9am-1pm

[Half Ton]

Time to remove another ton of trash from Lake Fayetteville between 9 am and 1 pm on Saturday October 12th. Any takers?

Boats make a big difference, and you can launch a boat for free tomorrow. More info at the link.

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[Plankton]

Bump.

Weather looks like it is going to work out for the cleanup this morning!

[Half Ton]

one hundred and ten volunteers came out on Saturday the 12th of October to help remove around 1,000 lbs of trash from Lake Fayetteville and it's surrounding parkland, roads, parking lots, and tributaries. Special thanks to you ACC members that made it out with your boats - YOU MADE A BOATLOAD of DIFFERENCE!

Here is a nice essay that one participant wrote about the event:

LAKE FAYETTEVILLE ENTERED OUR BIRDING CONSCIOUSNESS back in 1953, when it was a new lake, visited by young birders, Doug James and Bill Beall. There has been no looking back. It’s a great place with different birds in different seasons. In 1953, it was out in the middle of nowhere. Today, it is 100% enclosed by the fastest growing economy in Arkansas. Which brings me to trash.



I was at the lake this Saturday morning with volunteers picking up trash. Lots and lots of trash.



Anglers trash the lake with tossed bait cups and beer bottles. Throw away styrofoam coolers that break down into a white blizzard, everywhere, including in the bellies of unsuspecting waterfowl. Piles of throw-away nylon fishing line dangle from trees, encircle limbs under water, entangle feet of American Coots and Pied-billed Grebes, who struggle and drown.



Plastic bags, AKA “Ozark tumbleweeds,” blow in on prevailing wind from all directions. No Thank You retailers who sack in Ozark tumbleweeds, encouraging wasteful, throw-away habits.



Highway 265, or Crossover Road, forms the lake’s eastern border. Drivers on 265 dispose of beer cans and greasy sacks of McDonald’s waste with a 3-pointer into their pick up beds. At 45 MPH, these same beds are cleaned, whoopee, blown by magic out of sight and out of mind into Lake Fayetteville.



There is the odd tire and discarded easy chair, pushed off the bridge. Orange markers from a widening project on 265, blown into the lake. Yesterday’s birthday party balloons, landed in the water where they strangle bass and red-eared sliders, who judge them edible. After all, turtles have made it for a couple hundred million years on the hither-to-for basis of eating what is available.



Many of my first cool birds were at Lake Fayetteville. A Great Horned Owl nest in a big sycamore. A flock of Clay-colored Sparrows during a spring meeting of Arkansas Audubon Society. A Surf Scoter on a stormy November day. A flock of what were then Oldsquaws, on a Fayetteville Christmas Bird Count, with Doug James.



Trash increasingly collects in Lake Fayetteville because it is smack dab in the middle of our hard-charging-and-damn-the-consequences money and power obsessed culture. But Lake Fayetteville also has friends.



Pick-up volunteers included young folks from local high schools, Arkansas Game and Fish stream teams, boating groups, public school teachers, various watershed partnerships, U of A staff, City of Fayetteville people, boaters, anglers, businesses, and well, just all kinds and all ages of folks.



Folks . . . who consider Great Blue Herons money in the bank, paying interest in a decent future . . . who consider the chance to see five healthy red-eared sliders on a log worth donating an occasional Saturday to make it happen.