One fisherman recently took to the r/Fishing subreddit to share their frustrations about an all-too-common scenario.
"It's really not hard to clean up after yourself when you're done fishing guys," the poster wrote. "I know most of the folks who spend time outdoors hunting/fishing don't litter but damn finding trash less than 5 feet from trash receptacles makes my blood boil."
The other members of the forum shared the original poster's pain.
"It's so not hard to take out what you take in too. I can never believe littering like this is an accident, it's just apathy," wrote one commenter. "Whole balls of line just left behind when it's literally the easiest thing to chuck in your pocket. Worm containers are a little dirty but just bring a shopping bag and toss it back in your tackle bag. It's not hard to do the easiest thing."
"I don't understand how someone can love the outdoors and trash it like that," wrote another.
As these commenters alluded to, getting to enjoy nature is a wonderful privilege and one that is too easily abused. Any time we get the opportunity to spend time in nature, we should strive to do as little harm as possible, out of respect for our fellow nature-enjoyers and for the plants and animals that call that area home.
The more we abuse nature, the less we will be able to enjoy it. That's true in a broad sense — human activities are destroying the environment all over the world, constantly shrinking the pockets of untouched nature that we have left. But it's also true on a smaller scale — if you leave a bunch of trash next to a lake, the town might just shut off access to the lake, as another commenter pointed out.
"Smallish Lake near me was closed by the state because of all the trash dumping and lazy people leaving things and this was after they put up more signs and trash cans and after the DNR was handing out tickets left and right and after the many many chances people were given, now those same people whine and complain why they can't use the lake and all the nice things the lake brings with it," the commenter wrote.
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