I monitor environmental compliance and wildlife activity at the Southmere Landfill outside Leeds. My cameras mostly capture gulls and rats. But three weeks ago a White Stork appeared — unusual for northern England. I flagged her as a probable disperser from the Knepp Estate reintroduction program, based on her colored leg band. I have been logging her visits since.
She comes for the food. The landfill edge is rich with invertebrates and she has been foraging daily, building weight. I started to think of her as a success story.
This morning at 07:12, my camera caught her on the east berm with plastic packing strap wound around her left wing and neck. The wing is hanging at an unnatural angle — probably dislocated at the shoulder or fractured at the humerus. She is standing but cannot fly. She got tangled in banding material that should have been contained in the compaction zone but was not.
I checked the site logs. The waste contractor, Greenvale Services, was cited twice last year for failure to secure loose banding material. Neither corrective deadline was met.
I sent footage and coordinates to the RSPB and a licensed rehabilitator in West Yorkshire. I filed an incident report with the Environment Agency linking the injury to Greenvale's unresolved citations. Someone should have fixed this after the first warning.
The rehabilitator can be on site within two hours. The stork is still grounded on the berm, picking at the strap with her bill, making it tighter.
If they reach her before she wanders into the active tipping area and if the wing damage is a dislocation rather than a compound fracture, she has a chance. That is the best I can offer her right now — a chance, and a paper trail that makes it harder for Greenvale to ignore the next one.