The Tuscon Fire Department helped rescue a Cooper’s Hawk that was caught in a fishing line.
HAWK SAVE 🦅 Ladder 4 was recently dispatched to Christopher Columbus Park, where citizen reported a Coopers Hawk that was caught in some fishing line 🎣 Crews were able to get the bird to ground level and free the hawk 👏 Humans, pets, animals, we take care of them all at #TFD pic.twitter.com/qBRIKiJfhX
— Tucson Fire Department (@TucsonFireDept) November 7, 2023
The department posted about the save on X, formerly Twitter, with a short video and image of the bird.
According to the post, the incident occurred at Christopher Columbus Park and Ladder 4 responded to the call.
“Crews were able to get the bird to ground level and free the hawk,” the post noted.
The department concluded, “Humans, pets, animals, we take care of them all.”
Efforts to rescue animals from trash entanglement are known around the world. Last Year, WION News reported on the “Birds and Debris” internet initiative which collected photos of birds being negatively impacted by trash around the globe.
Through this effort to raise awareness, the project has repeatedly recorded and displayed incidents of birds being found caught in fishing lines, ropes, balloons, and other materials.
Dr. Alex Bond, a researcher with the Natural History Museum in London and one of the study’s authors, stated, “Basically, if a bird constructs a nest utilising long fibrous materials—like seaweed, branches, or reeds—the odds are it will have human garbage in its nest someplace.”
Bond also expressed concern over discarded face mask waste.
He noted, “If you consider the various components that go into making a surgical mask, you might consider the elastic that gets twisted around the legs of birds or the hard piece of plastic that holds it over your nose that may cause injury to birds trying to consume it.”
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, this has increased since 2020 and continues to adversely affect wildlife, especially birds so much that about a quarter of the bird entanglements recorded involve masks, officials said.
The project was a four-year effort and included sightings reported in Japan, Australia, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, and North America.
According to WION News, Justine Ammendolia, the lead researcher from Dalhousie University in Canada, told BBC News, “In April of 2020, the first sighting of a bird hanging from a facemask in a tree was recorded from Canada and the sightings just internationally cascaded afterwards,” she said.