STATEMENT SUBMITTED TO PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION 4/8/2024:
On April 8, 2025, Save Arlington Wildlife received a report from Town Meeting Member Beth Melofchik of a dead Great Blue Heron in Hills Pond at Menotomy Rocks Park. One of our volunteers collaborated with retired wildlife rehabber and Arlington resident Ellen Reed to retrieve the heron from the Pond. The Great Blue Heron’s feet were entangled in fishing line that was dangling from a tree branch and there was a fishing hook impaled through its wing. Reed briefly examined it and determined the heron struggled on the line and drowned to death. Save Arlington Wildlife is sending the body to a vet for further examination and necropsy. Discarded fishing line waste is a huge issue at our local ponds and is responsible for injuries to our local wildlife. Last fall, Save Arlington Wildlife rescued a juvenile Black Crowned Night Heron at Spy Pond that also had a fish hook in its wing and the whole body was entangled in fishing line. While that heron was rehabilitated with the help of wildlife rehabber Julie Ford and Tufts Wildlife Clinic and released back onto the pond right before migration, others have not been so lucky. That same month, a Great Blue Heron was pictured at Hill’s Pond swallowing a fish still attached to a line and bobber. Without intervention, that heron suffered a slow death of strangulation and starvation. Numerous queries were put into Parks & Red to address this escalating issue though to SAW’s knowledge nothing was done at the time. Now we have a heron that died tragically due to completely avoidable circumstances. Our resident wildlife face increasing threats to their survival from habitat fragmentation, rodenticide poisoning, drought due to global warming and plastic pollution. It’s time we as a town seriously consider implementing more aggressive policies to meaningfully address fishing line casualties, including mandated restrictions on recreational fishing in sensitive wildlife habitat.
Photo by Denise Jaillet
