[trash] Alaska bear trashed to death
“How a dead Alaska bear led to a worldwide campaign. Mail Tribune from southern Oregon reports on a beach clean-up campaign that has involved thousands of people worldwide and how it was born when a Eugene, Ore., woman was reading about the death of a bear in Alaska. Judie Hansen was thumbing through an Alaska Department of Fish and Game magazine when she came across a story about a brown bear that died after eating 13 plastic foam cups. The article stirred her to organize the first statewide volunteer beach cleanup in October 1984, according to the Mail Tribune story. “The first cleanup was ‘such an immediate hit that other coastal states … copied the model and within a few years all of the coastal United States and many foreign nations were drawn into the efforts,’ wrote Bill Monroe of The Oregonian, who covered the first beach cleanup for that newspaper.” Hansen herself later wrote: “I honor that Alaskan brown bear. If it hadn’t been for him, I might never have had such a wild and crazy idea.”” http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/newsreader/story/363269.html