San Francisco environmental organization Presidio Trust will soon create an “amnesty pond” next to the city’s Mountain Lake, a pond where merciful goldfish owners will be able to dump their pets with a clear conscience.
The creation of the amnesty pond is meant to deter people from dumping goldfish or other species of fish into neighboring Mountain Lake, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Mountain Lake was just poisoned to clear out all non-native species from the lake; according to the Chronicle, 862 fish were killed by the poison, all of them non-native. The Presidio Trust is undertaking a $12 million project, reportedly the first of its kind, to restore the lake to how it was before Europeans arrived in America.
To that end, the Presidio Trust will introduce native Western pond turtles, three-spined sticklebacks, and chorus frogs into Mountain Lake. The organization hopes that by creating the amnesty pond next to the larger body of water, people will think twice about flushing their goldfish down the toilet.
Still, as the Chronicle itself notes, the pond needs to be “well-marked,” or it will be tough to convince people to use the amnesty pond over the big, beautiful Mountain Lake for their fish disposal needs.
Photo: File
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