We were stoked with the turnout of volunteers who came to support our first clean up at San Gabriel River in the area of a sea turtle habitat! People on the river trail, biking and exercising, shouted with their thumbs up in encouragement and some even stopped by to lend a hand. In the end, volunteers picked up a total of 740 pounds of trash.
Cleaning up the San Gabriel River is important to protect the habitat of our local Pacific Green Sea Turtles from plastic pollution that can harm or entangle them. The trash we hauled out of the river comes from storm drains upstream, tidal flows from the coast, and litter carried across the land by wind and rain.
We plan to do more river cleanups in the future, so stay tuned by following our Instagram account @lbsurfrider or sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of the page.
A special thank you to the offices of Councilmember Kristina Duggan & Supervisor Janice Hahn in helping our Chapter with the special permits needed to make this cleanup possible!
A green sea turtle even made a special appearance during our cleanup (Photo: Dani Dong)