Billy is an eight-year-old bull from Pui O beach on the south of Lantau Island, and he was found dead on Friday with his stomach full of plastics. The examination revealed the bull's intestinal tract and stomach had been blocked by plastic bags, enough to fill two rubbish bins, according to the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department. Now, beachgoers in Hong Kong have been urged to take their trash home following the bovine's death.
Chan Hall-sion, a Greenpeace campaigner, believed the tragedy was partly caused by the trash being left behind by people going to the beach or the countryside. She said beaches were considered to be high-risk areas because a single-use plastic thrown into bins can already be blown back out into the surrounding area.
Over the past years, Billy had a friendly encounter with beachgoers and the neighboring campsite, where he ended up eating their leftovers, the South China Morning Post reported. The AFCD statement noted this likely leads to a change in its habit of food finding, correlating to plastic bags with food.
Ho Loy, the chairwoman of Lantau Buffalo Association and helped raise Billy, said the residents in Lantau were greatly saddened upon hearing the news. Ho noted they considered the bull as legendary as it had joined an entirely different species on its own at a young age. The chairwoman added it changed the way how people think about cattle, where some residents believed they were aggressive and dangerous, but Billy changed their perception with his friendly demeanor.
Ho also criticized the government for putting up banners to educate the public not feeding wild animals, but was badly designed, so most people tend to ignore it. She said they only regulate it for the sake of regulating, and they don't think if what they're doing was effective or not.
Meanwhile, Chan said the most important thing to do is to curb the use of single-use plastics. For instance, those who are planning to go to the beach or countryside should bring reusable cutlery and boxes, and that's already considered as help. Also, she encouraged kiosks and restaurants located at beaches in handling out less throwaway plastic.
A survey of 34 coastal sites by WWF-Hong Kong in 2015 and 2016 revealed that plastic debris accounted for about 60 to 80 percent of marine litter found in shorelines. The majority of them were single-use disposable items, including plastic packaging and polystyrene fragments. Plastics particularly accounted for approximately a fifth of the city's daily municipal waste generation.
