Youths ask for respect

Dear Editor:

We are four concerned young citizens who recently picked up garbage around the pond in the park in the new Foxglove subdivision at the corner of Aberdeen and McQueen Streets in Fergus.

We love the pond and visit it regularly. Every time we go to the pond we pick up garbage because we want to be good friends to all the animals that live in or near the pond. If we don’t help the Earth, the Earth won’t be able to help us in the future.

When were picking up the garbage we were having fun and we were feeling happy. We liked being able to make a difference; however, we were very disappointed when we found dozens of bags of dog poop thrown into the pond and the habitat that surrounds it.

Plastic bags can take anywhere from 20 to 1000 years to decompose in nature.  Most of the bags that we found had been used to pick up dog poop and were thrown into parts of the pond furthest from the park where people could see if someone was littering. This means that whoever was throwing their poop bags into the pond likely knows that this is wrong.

What makes this especially disappointing is that there is a garbage can located at the far end of the pond for dog walkers to use to discard their dog poop. There is no good reason to throw dog poop into the pond – as well as other trash like cans, pails, boxes and plastic plates –  when there is a garbage can nearby.

Down at the pond their are goldfish, geese, ducks, frogs, toads, dragonflies, snails and a blue heron that can get very sick from the garbage people are throwing in the water.

We live in a good town that gives its residents places to put their garbage and recycling so that it does not cause harm to people or animals. We would like all of the people who use our parks and visit the pond to treat it with respect.

Reegan Rogers (Grade 1, James McQueen P.S.),
Logan Halls and Isaac Rogers (future Grade 3 students at J.D Hogarth),
and Payton Halls (Grade 6, J.D. Hogarth P.S.)
,
Fergus