Balloons are great at birthdays, weddings, graduations and more, but once they get loose, balloons can pose a threat to many animals.
Birds, turtles and other animals commonly mistake balloons for food, which can harm or even kill them.
In addition, many animals can become entangled in balloon strings, which can strangle them or hurt their feet and hands.
For example, more than a hundred balloons were recently collected at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey at a cleanup, and that’s just the number that made it to this one particular beach.
Some of the following pictures are hard to look at, but they make clearer than any words why we all should find alternatives to letting a balloon go.
This story is part of our Open Spaces blog.
