Tire-Free Rivers is a non-profit volunteer crusade. Tire-Free Rivers is not affiliated with anything else. Nobody makes any money doing this.
| Tire-Free Rivers |
| 2008 Annual Report |
It was not a banner year for Tire-Free Rivers.
Let's face it, the water was high almost all summer and fall. All through August and September, and even as late as November, the water levels remained high in any rivers I ventured on. I couldn't get near them.
I knew where the tires lay in the Saint John and Nashwaak Rivers, the streams close to my home. But they lay under several paddle-lengths of fast water, and beyond the reach of my hook.
My friends who yanked so many tires out of local waterways the year before were busy, making life-changing decisions that understandably took precedence over Tire-Free Rivers. I know they'll be back.
My efforts to trade links among websites with similar river-remediation efforts were futile. Only a token number of website owners expressed any credence in my devotion to the cause.
Perhaps they feel that the phenomenom of stream beds lined with waste tires is a normal artifact of post-industrial urban ecology. And that removing them is a waste of time, an insignificant contribution to environmental protection.
Maybe they don't want to get wet and dirty.
But hey, I'm not complaining. It's not about me, it's about the tires.
And it's about about one more stretch of tire-free river, one more living organism no longer choked by inert rubber disks. And about individuals like us contributing our time and care to restore our home river so it can support life and sustain our biosphere, one tire, one stream, one day at a time.
Yes, we removed tires from several new streams. Some of these rivers have names … some are mere intermittent ditches of rainwater. And we removed tires from streams we had visited before. In our own way, we made a difference.
Now it's your turn. The next time your boat floats over a tire you can easily remove … and send for proper waste management ... seize the moment. Make a token payment back to Nature. Restore the health of the river in whose current you flow.
No one else is going to remove that tire from the river, not even that Somebody we always talk about who should. Only you. Don't do it for me, do it for your home stream.
A new year, 2009, fills me with hope and drive. This will be a good year for Tire-Free Rivers.
Reach out and Remove a Tire!
Tire-Free Rivers is a non-profit volunteer crusade. Tire-Free Rivers is not affiliated with anything else. Nobody makes any money doing this.
