Donkeys foraging among the plastic waste at a dump on Lamu. The animals are crucial to the island’s economy – there are nearly 3,000 donkeys on Lamu, including some bred for racing. Photograph: The Donkey Sanctuary
By Phoebe Weston and Caroline Kimeu in Lamu
The smell of sea water and fresh dung fill the oceanfront air on the Kenyan island of Lamu, as donkeys plod along the town’s dock, ferrying residents and cargo. Lamu Old Town is a Unesco world heritage site, known for preserving its Swahili culture. With no cars but nearly 3,000 donkeys on the island, residents rely heavily on the animals for a living and as transport in the narrow, winding streets of the 700-year-old town, one of east Africa’s oldest.
Now, however, increasing numbers of donkeys are dying from eating plastic on the island, and scientists fear many other land animals are also being affected by human plastic pollution.
With little grass to graze on, donkeys browse for food through heaps of plastic bottles, nappies and scraps of cloth dumped by the road.
The owner of one weak and dehydrated baby donkey recently rushed the animal to the Donkey Sanctuary, an animal welfare charity. When vets gave the animal laxatives, they were troubled to find 30cm of knotted plastic wrapped up in its stool.
“The donkeys will eat all sorts of things, from plastics to clothes to cartons – everything,” says Dr Obadiah Sing’Oei, the lead vet at the Donkey Sanctuary. The animals are eating enough plastic to block their digestive tracts, leading to starvation and death.
“This brings a lot of issues … nutritional colic in donkeys is usually fatal,” says Sing’Oei.
The toll of plastic pollution on marine life is widely documented, but far less is known about the effect on terrestrial animals. In one of the first studies of its kind, researchers from the University of Portsmouth and the Donkey Sanctuary are investigating the effects of plastic pollution on animals in Kenya, focusing on donkeys and other livestock.
The team’s full results are expected to be published later this year. They record at least three donkeys a month dying from colic caused by eating from rubbish dumps – but say the true number is probably higher.
Sing’Oei says: “This is nothing, as just a fraction of colic cases are brought to the clinic. Anecdotally, if you ask any donkey owner in Lamu, they will tell you they have lost a donkey to colic from plastic.
“When owners bring their donkeys to the clinic it is as a last resort.” He says it is “fast becoming a crisis for donkey welfare”. By the time the donkeys get to the vet, Sing’Oei says many of them are writhing in pain, struggling to breathe or unable to move.
“If they came earlier, we may have been able to save them,” says Sing’Oei. “For donkeys, surgery in the abdomen is a ‘Hail Mary’ – they hardly survive.”
Hufeidha Abdul Majid, a 27-year-old donkey owner who lost one of his animals to colic in May, says: “I am really concerned about the plastics. Before, blockages were caused by organic material, so we could handle that, but that’s not the case now.”
Majid’s grandfather passed his donkeys on to him before he died, and he now owns 25 of the animals, using them to carry goods.
“To lose a donkey is hard – it’s like a family member,” he says. “I no longer leave my donkeys to roam in town because you don’t know what they will eat.”
The donkey study will form part of a growing body of research into what plastic waste is doing to animals on land, as well as the more widely known effects on sea life. “We’ve got less data on it [than on marine ecosystems], but initial work on the impact of plastics on land suggests it could be equally pervasive,” says Prof Richard Thompson, from the University of Plymouth.
In the UK, researchers in 2022 found plastic was being eaten by more than half of the small mammal species tested. The most common type was polyester – probably from clothing.
Read more on The Guardian
The smell of sea water and fresh dung fill the oceanfront air on the Kenyan island of Lamu, as donkeys plod along the town’s dock, ferrying residents and cargo. Lamu Old Town is a Unesco world heritage site, known for preserving its Swahili culture. With no cars but nearly 3,000 donkeys on the island, residents rely heavily on the animals for a living and as transport in the narrow, winding streets of the 700-year-old town, one of east Africa’s oldest.
Now, however, increasing numbers of donkeys are dying from eating plastic on the island, and scientists fear many other land animals are also being affected by human plastic pollution.
With little grass to graze on, donkeys browse for food through heaps of plastic bottles, nappies and scraps of cloth dumped by the road.
The owner of one weak and dehydrated baby donkey recently rushed the animal to the Donkey Sanctuary, an animal welfare charity. When vets gave the animal laxatives, they were troubled to find 30cm of knotted plastic wrapped up in its stool.
“The donkeys will eat all sorts of things, from plastics to clothes to cartons – everything,” says Dr Obadiah Sing’Oei, the lead vet at the Donkey Sanctuary. The animals are eating enough plastic to block their digestive tracts, leading to starvation and death.
“This brings a lot of issues … nutritional colic in donkeys is usually fatal,” says Sing’Oei.
The toll of plastic pollution on marine life is widely documented, but far less is known about the effect on terrestrial animals. In one of the first studies of its kind, researchers from the University of Portsmouth and the Donkey Sanctuary are investigating the effects of plastic pollution on animals in Kenya, focusing on donkeys and other livestock.
The team’s full results are expected to be published later this year. They record at least three donkeys a month dying from colic caused by eating from rubbish dumps – but say the true number is probably higher.
Sing’Oei says: “This is nothing, as just a fraction of colic cases are brought to the clinic. Anecdotally, if you ask any donkey owner in Lamu, they will tell you they have lost a donkey to colic from plastic.
“When owners bring their donkeys to the clinic it is as a last resort.” He says it is “fast becoming a crisis for donkey welfare”. By the time the donkeys get to the vet, Sing’Oei says many of them are writhing in pain, struggling to breathe or unable to move.
“If they came earlier, we may have been able to save them,” says Sing’Oei. “For donkeys, surgery in the abdomen is a ‘Hail Mary’ – they hardly survive.”
Hufeidha Abdul Majid, a 27-year-old donkey owner who lost one of his animals to colic in May, says: “I am really concerned about the plastics. Before, blockages were caused by organic material, so we could handle that, but that’s not the case now.”
Majid’s grandfather passed his donkeys on to him before he died, and he now owns 25 of the animals, using them to carry goods.
“To lose a donkey is hard – it’s like a family member,” he says. “I no longer leave my donkeys to roam in town because you don’t know what they will eat.”
The donkey study will form part of a growing body of research into what plastic waste is doing to animals on land, as well as the more widely known effects on sea life. “We’ve got less data on it [than on marine ecosystems], but initial work on the impact of plastics on land suggests it could be equally pervasive,” says Prof Richard Thompson, from the University of Plymouth.
In the UK, researchers in 2022 found plastic was being eaten by more than half of the small mammal species tested. The most common type was polyester – probably from clothing.
Read more on The Guardian
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