is one of the world's leading teaching and research hospitals for wildlife and conservation medicine, providing state-of-the-art veterinary care for more than 3,000 wild animals each year.

The center of draws on lessons learned from each patient admitted to teach the world to care about and care for wildlife and the environment.

>>Funding for Untamed is brought to you by... (water trickling) (birds chirping) (dramatic music) >>Nope, I just can't do it.

This one's going in the recycling bin.

Let me ask you a question.

Did you ever consider what is the difference between a major oil spill or pollution event and that simple act of littering?

Well, certainly, there's the scale of the event, but really, both result from human activity.

One may be an accidental discharge of waste or pollutant or raw material, but the act of littering is a deliberate human act to introduce waste into the environment.

Both have consequences, both are potentially deadly for wildlife.

Now, there are many kinds of litter out there.

Certainly, human food waste, bottles, containers from things that we drink often get thrown out the window of the car, on the side of the road, dropped along the path as we walk along or simply irresponsibly dropped the instant we're finished with them.

Balloons released into the environment, fishing line left on the side of a stream, food waste, the remains of the sandwich, the banana peel that goes out the window, all of these things are being placed in the environment by people who simply don't want to deal with them anymore.

(quiet music) Why is it that people litter?

Well, there are probably as many reasons as there are people doing the littering.

Some think that what they're putting down is benign, it'll dissolve into the ground.

Some think that it's somebody else's job to clean up after me.

Some may think that they're doing a good thing by throwing food out on the side of the road.

But in far too many cases, people just don't think at all.

Well, here's something to ponder.

There are 34 million smokers in the United States.

If only half of those people dropped one cigarette butt on the ground each day, each day, they would deposit just in the paper alone enough paper to cover more than five football fields.

That's how much tiny little acts can add up to massive consequences.

And every piece of litter has the potential to be lethal to some form of wildlife.

Here at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, we really are informed about what's going on in the environment by the case histories of our patients.

Now, in addition to litter, of course, we've got animals that are hit by cars, electrocuted, poisoned, attacked by cats that are people's pets that are allowed to roam freely, many other human causes.

But one thing we have found, and this is especially true for litter, all of these negative human impacts can be eliminated or at least greatly reduced if people will just think.

(quiet guitar music) >>The Wildlife Center of Virginia receives many different calls related to wildlife and challenges involving litter.

Usually, this involves either ingestion of or entanglement in some kind of human trash.

Wildlife find themselves entangled in balloon string or lost fishing gear.

They may ingest fishhooks or plastics, and there are many other dangers associated with litter that wildlife can encounter.

Wild animals often come across food-related litter when they're foraging for natural foods in their environment and can find themselves stuck inside this litter.

Adult mammals like raccoons and opossums and skunks can find their forelimbs or their heads trapped inside this kind of garbage that they were trying to eat from.

We've seen skunks with their head stuck in yogurt containers and even raccoons with their entire forelimb inside of a soda can.

Usually, this kind of litter can be removed by veterinarians, but if an animal isn't rescued, these entanglements would eventually cause amputation of a limb, starvation, or even death in the wild.

Unfortunately, direct ingestion of plastics does occur and we see even species like bald eagles coming in with bottle caps or balloons in their digestive tracts.

These materials build up over time and cause blockages that can eventually starve wild animals.

Encounters with plastics like balloon string, fishing gear, and bottle caps are unfortunately very common for wildlife simply due to the incredible abundance of these materials within their habitats.

Patients admitted to the center due to litter-related injuries require a variety of different treatments.

Entanglements usually need to be cut from the animal and often cause underlying wounds or other injuries that require treatment.

Aquatic turtles and waterfowl that ingest fishhooks or similar materials usually require invasive surgery to remove that object and then specialized feeding to allow their system to heal.

Some of the most memorable cases for me are those of young birds that find themselves entangled in litter within their nests.

Sadly, parents mistake fishing line and other similar materials for appropriate nesting material and they incorporate those things into their nests.

Then their young can become entangled within the nest and have a variety of injuries as a result.

I find it particularly sad when normal parental care behaviors become harmful to young wildlife because of things that humans have introduced into the environment.

This is sadly particularly common for species like osprey that nest close to the water where large amounts of litter tend to accumulate.

Animals can find litter in a variety of places from roadsides to parks to landfills.

Unfortunately, storm runoff and downstream flows cause especially high accumulation of these materials in aquatic systems.

Animals are, of course, highly dependent on water for survival.

So it's impossible for them to avoid these areas where there are large amounts of plastic litter.

It's important to talk about the concerns regarding wild animals and litter because these issues are completely preventable.

A simple act like disposing of trash in an appropriate container can save multiple wild lives.

(quiet guitar music) >>One of the unfortunate things is when we drop a piece of litter, sometimes it doesn't stay there.

And even if it does, sometimes it lasts in the environment for decades, perhaps even hundreds of years.

And throughout that entire time, it can have negative consequences for wildlife and the environment.

We need to be aware that simply because we drop it here, the consequences and results may really take place miles away.

(quiet guitar music) >>10 years ago, Friends of the Middle River was formed by a group of local citizens to address issues with pollution of the Middle River.

Middle River being a major tributary to the Southern branch of the Shenandoah River, which is a vital part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Our mission is to convey to the people of Stanton and Augusta County the importance of a clean watershed.

We do this through citizen science, stewardship, and educational outreach programs.

Annually, we do a major river cleanup.

We send groups of volunteers.

Last year, we had over a hundred volunteers actually float the river in canoes and kayaks, using the canoes as barges to pick up litter out of the river.

>>Well, this is a rural river.

So we get a little bit different kind of trash than you would get in an urban area.

But by far the things that we collect the most of is tires.

We also collect appliances and farm equipment that washes into the river.

Things like tarps or pipes or old gates or something like that.

We do get some trash that's like hand trash, like bottles or Mylar balloons.

And a couple of years ago, we actually contracted with a company to help us winch a whole car out of the river.

And every now and again, we still find like engine blocks that people will deposit down by the side of the river too.

>>So stormwater runoff is the culprit.

In many cases with roadside trash, somebody throws something out of their car, lands on the roadway near a stream, gets washed into the stream, and there you have it.

That's probably one of the major contributors to things like bottles, cans, plastics, et cetera.

There are several major problems caused by trash deposited in our waterways.

One would be chemicals that are attached to the trash that is a deposited in the rivers.

And one of the major ones would be tires.

Over the course of time, tires degrade and give off harmful chemicals that then contaminate the waterway.

>>Another thing that the trash in the river can do that can be a real problem is cause wildlife to get entrapped in it, which can kill or harm the wildlife.

>>And lastly, the thing that most people notice is the aesthetics.

People that float the river, fish in the river, or just live along the river, this is a natural waterway, it's beautiful.

And when there's trash in the river, it actually damages the psyche of the people who want to go out in nature and enjoy the river.

(quiet guitar music) >>I think river cleanup's really important for not just myself, as someone who enjoys paddling this river, but also because this river is really the lifeblood of this area, this community.

It's the lifeblood for the wildlife and the plant life in this particular area.

But this river is also the source of the drinking water and the bathing water and the washing water.

It's the source of historic economic activity in this area and also future economic activity in this area.

So it's very important that we keep this river clean for those reasons, along with the aesthetics and outdoor recreation side of the river too.

When we do these river cleanups, we do them, organize ones two to three times a year, where we get a number of volunteer groups to come out and they'll patrol the banks and pick up trash that they find on the banks.

I'll get a number of paddling friends.

We'll come out here with a few canoes and we'll take care of the trash that's either in the river or hanging from the trees along the river.

It used to be, we'd get a lot of intentional trash that was in the river.

We'd dig a lot of tires, automobile parts.

We'd also see, whenever we get high water events, things that have floated into the river from the floodplain around the area, things like LP gas tanks, people's lawn furniture that's been along the riverside.

Nowadays, though the single largest problem we have with trash is single-use plastics.

When the folks are working the banks, that's usually what they're getting is the single-use plastic for packaging.

It makes for a nasty mess.

The one that I really hate the most of the single-use plastics is the bags that they give you at the grocery store and everywhere else.

These things are, they're just terrible.

When the water comes up, it deposits them in the trees.

We find them on the bottom of the river and we read and hear so much about microplastics.

These, if they're out here for a month and you'd go to try to pick them up, they literally disintegrate in your hand.

So they're extremely difficult to even police as we do a river cleanup, simply because the thinness on them, they just disintegrate.

And there's no way for us to ever bring them back into the trash system.

The problem with the single-use plastics is that so many people don't realize that anytime they don't dispose of their waste in a proper manner, say they're driving around and they just throw it out the window of their vehicle, everything ends up here in the river.

With the South River, we find that the further you go down, the more municipalities that you see, the greater amount of plastics and trash we find in the river, simply because there's more opportunity for it to wash in from outside sources.

So if people would eliminate just tossing things out, figuring, oh, it'll just sit there.

It doesn't sit there.

It migrates into the river.

From here, the next thing we know, it's in the Chesapeake Bay system, and then it's out to sea.

People really need to consciously think about the litter that they create and where that litter ends up.

If we consciously put it into a proper receptacle, at least it's going to get into a landfill that's going to be better protected than it ending up here in the rivers.

I personally think that we need to get away from the single use and move more towards reusable products.

When it comes to bagging your groceries or your products from the store, take your own bags, reuse them.

It's much better all the way around.

When it comes to the drinking containers and the packaging containers for fluids, if we can go to reusable ones, buy that nice fancy bottle to drink your beverages out of, try to use bulk products, as opposed to the smaller use ones that are generating that much more waste, try to use product or containment that is actually recyclable.

You know, there's still a good market for recycling aluminum and steel products, whereas plastics, right now nobody's taking them.

Ideally, I would like to see us get completely away from the use of plastics, simply because we can't recycle them.

They're ending up in the water supply.

They're ending up in every living thing on the planet.

And we have no idea of what the effects of this plastic pollution is going to be to our health and the health of the planet.

(quiet guitar music) >>In many ways, I think the public is more aware of the issues that surround our litter problem today.

Our public awareness has grown and our collective consciousness has heightened when we think of the long-term effects with litter.

There's also more organized cleanup activities going on today.

More people cleaning up rivers and coming together to adopt a road or a park and really try and take care of some of the more badly affected landscapes.

On the flip side, I think that the type of trash and the volume of trash that we're generating today is changing.

We are an increasingly disposable society and one that really likes convenience.

And unfortunately, that means we're producing a lot more plastic items, a lot more things that are meant to just be used once and then thrown away.

So whether we're reaching for plastic plates, because we don't want to do the dishes, or maybe we're reaching for those apple slices that are pre-cut and triple wrapped in layers of plastic, because we don't want to chop up an apple and wash a knife afterward, all of that stuff that we're putting out there is going to be in our environment for a very long time to come, and that's a big problem.

Because a lot of this litter doesn't go away and because it is so easily spread through the wind and through watershed systems, there are really wide-ranging effects out there because of the litter and the trash that we're putting into this world.

So we are really affecting a wide variety of wildlife that aren't just in our own backyards.

We're seeing more stories in the media about dead whales washing up on beaches with their bellies full of plastic, because they're just out there in the ocean and they happen to be eating this stuff that we're putting out there.

And they slowly starve to death.

We know that sea turtles have problems with ingesting plastic bags and balloon fragments and downed balloons.

Again, similar to the whales.

It's just stuff that they're ingesting as they're foraging for their own food.

Plastic bags and downed balloons look like jellyfish, which is a natural food substance.

But when instead turtles are eating those plastic items, they are starving to death.

We know that plastic is also affecting albatrosses, which are these really amazing birds that live in very remote places.

They breed on very tiny islands in the middle of the ocean.

And we would normally think that those environments should be pristine because they're far away and they're not on the regular beaten path of human traffic, but even in those places, plastics are washing up on the beach.

The parent birds are ingesting plastics in the foods that they eat and then unintentionally feeding those plastic items to their babies.

And the babies are starting to death as well.

And if all of that's not alarming enough, and it really should be, we are affecting our own food as well.

We know that more and more fish species are having an accumulation of the microplastics, the really tiny bitty plastics that make their way into our shampoo and hand soaps.

And just the plastics that are out there that are breaking down.

And the fish that accumulate these items are fish that we eat.

So we have arrived at this point where we are now eating our own trash.

(quiet guitar music) >>Is important at the center to share the stories of the patients that we see, wild animals, affected by litter.

Because as an institution, our mission is to do more than just teach people about wildlife and the environment.

Our mission is to teach the world to care about wildlife and the environment.

So by sharing those stories of patients, wild animals affected by litter, whether it be a toad or a black bear, we hope to inspire change.

Hearing and sharing those stories can create a ripple effect and make these big, abstract ideas like pollution and litter a much more personal idea for people, which we hope to inspire change.

Of all the different messages we give to the public about litter, to me, I think one of the most important is the message that little actions do make a difference.

When you think about stories on the news related to pollution or litter, most of the times we hear things about oil spills or toxic chemicals leaking into the environment.

In reality, the average person doesn't really have much control over those things.

On the other hand, we can control things like making sure candy wrappers get put into garbage bins, making sure we clean up fishing tackle and line left behind, and just like how we share stories with a small audience that we hope radiate and create a ripple effect, those small changes in behavior can spread and add up and culminate to have a big impact.

Over the years, the messages that we give to the public during our education programs about litter have evolved into what we call the message of the apple core.

And that's where we ask people to imagine someone driving along in their car, on a roadway, eating an apple, they're finished with that apple, just the core is left.

They don't want to eat that.

So they think that it may be okay to toss that core into the woods.

The thought process being that it's biodegradable, it's not harmful for wildlife.

It may even be a good snack or a good meal for some wild animal, but that's precisely the problem.

Food garbage, food litter, just like an apple core, while at first sight it might seem harmless, can be incredibly dangerous for wildlife because it attracts those animals to busy, dangerous roadways, in turn attracting their predators, in turn attracting their predators.

It's truly a domino effect.

The education ambassadors at the wildlife center are really, really important to helping us inspire change in behavior because they are real world physical concrete representatives of these big issues like pollution and litter.

It's much easier for someone to feel connected and take ownership of these issues when they can be face to face with a turtle or an opossum or a hawk that has been affected itself by things like pollution and litter.

(quiet guitar music) >>The good news is there are many things that you can do to personally reduce the negative impact that litter has on the natural world, and particularly on wildlife.

The easiest is obviously don't litter.

Put a litter bag in your car where waste products or things that need to be recycled at a later time can be safely and neatly kept until you get home.

Also, remember food waste thrown from your car is a special risk for wildlife because it can lure wildlife to the side of the road.

Remember, if you have some type of celebration or you're feeling festive, don't act out with helium balloons.

When you release a helium balloon into the sky, it looks festive and celebratory going up.

But remember, when it comes down, it's potentially deadly.

That balloon, and especially that long piece of string, can cause serious problems and even kill many wild species.

Now, the fishing line that we enjoy when we're on the stream or the lake or at the ocean or on the beach frequently breaks.

If you are a fishermen or an angler, clean up after yourself, bring home that broken or discarded tackle.

But if you're just somebody who enjoys the waterways or the riparian environment, and you find fishing line, take the time to stop and retrieve it.

And remember that every piece of that line that you bring in is an entanglement you have prevented.

Certainly, one of the things that you can do as a family, perhaps, is to reduce your collective footprint on the planet.

And that's pretty easy to do, too.

Reduce your purchase of products that are in one-time plastic containers that end up being a waste problem.

Reduce your consumption of easily disposable things.

Opt instead for the reusable, the rechargeable, the items that have multiple uses so that your personal waste stream is reduced and your impact on the planet is lessened.

And ultimately, get involved as a community to keep the planet clean.

Join a litter cleanup, adopt a highway.

You can find out more about this in your own community by contacting your local highway department or your parks and rec department to find an event or a place where you can get involved.

Remember, even though it may be inconvenient to pick up after other people or to carry that piece of waste home, you will be saving wild lives with every piece of litter you remove from the environment.

(quiet guitar music) >>Funding for Untamed is brought to you by... (water trickling) (birds chirping) (dramatic music)