One of the fondest memories of my childhood was going to Central Park in the Bundang District near my home almost every weekend with my family. The expansive park gave us a beautiful and fresh scenery to ride bikes, take long walks among nature, go on hikes up the small mountain, have picnics on the grass under the glorious sun, and my favorite activity, feed the fish (carp) in the lake. There was an abundance of freshwater carp in the lake of either a dark grayish shade or bright orange carp that glittered in the sunlight. The lake water was murky so it was hard to see the dark carp unless they came close to the surface but the orange ones could easily be spotted. I would beg my mom not to forget to pack some bread or buy snacks before we went to the park so that I could drop the food to the awaiting carp. 

Dozens of people, mostly kids, would be scrunched together at a low fence next to the lake quivered with excitement as we would throw bread and snacks at the carp who would come to the surface in a frenzy trying to consume human food. There were even a few ducks at the lake which would also join in the mad dash to get the food. Both the carp and the ducks would struggle with each other to eat every morsel and I was too young and immature to realize the problem that us humans were causing. 

Furthermore, some kids, including me, would pour out the contents of our snack bags and sometimes the plastic bags would slip out of their hands and fall into the lake. The carp would even swallow some plastic pieces in the process of devouring all the food they could. No one seemed to care.

It’s odd as ever since I was like six or seven years old, I was aware of the rule that people were to never feed animals at the zoo any human food, but I totally disregarded this when it came to the carp and ducks at the lake. I naively thought I was aiding the animals by feeding them as they seemed so ravenous with hunger whenever I threw in some morsels. My false impression was that I was doing a good deed without recognizing the harm I was doing to the animals and their natural environment. 

This went on for years and despite the one sign on the low fence stating that the carp should not be fed, everyone just ignored it as there was no visible enforcement or warnings of a fine. Maybe it should have been the responsibility of the parents to tell their children that they were basically littering into a fresh water body with wildlife living in it, but they probably just enjoyed watching their children having such a good time, just like my parents. We weren’t purposely trying to be nefarious, but intention doesn’t matter when nature is being assaulted on a daily basis.

As I got older and reached middle school age, I was too busy with my studies to go to the park as often as before, but once in a while I would take a walk through the park when I had some reprieve from academics. At this point, I was past the stage of being excited about feeding fish and on one particular walk, I became extremely flabbergasted by not only the shrill cacophony of wild children around the low fence but more so by the fact that they were dumping bags of popcorn into the lake. 

They weren’t even dropping a few snacks by hand, not that it would be acceptable. They were literally shaking the contents out of the popcorn bags and then dropping the paper bags into the lake. I walked over and told them they shouldn’t litter into the lake and one mother got in my face and told me that I should never tell her child what to do. Her wild eyes and rage-filled face made me back off. Some of the children mocked and laughed at me as I cowered away. I didn’t return to the park for a few years.

At the beginning of my sophomore year, I started an environmental course and it was my first real taste of the scientific aspects of the environment and the impact that humans inflict on our natural world. One of the main aspects of the course is “Interactions Between Different Species and the Environment” which got me to recall both my good and bad memories about the lake. I also joined a volunteer program to pick up trash at a large stream that goes through my neighborhood and the more I got interested in the environment and conservation, the more I took umbrage at the unbridled pollution of the lake and unsafe feeding of the wildlife. 

Not sure what to do, I visited the park ranger’s office at the park on a weekend and inquired about the lake. I told a ranger my concerns about the lake and the extremely polite and gregarious gentleman listened to all my concerns with an approving nod. He then explained that the unauthorized feeding of the carp had been going on for even before he started working there, which was 17 years prior. Parents just ignored the sign prohibiting the feeding so the park workers had given up too. Unfortunately, the city council had to make regulations to enforce a fine on those who littered into the lake but it was not a priority for them. Those city council members probably brought their own kids to the park before and engaged in the same kind of activity. 

Frustrated, I asked the park ranger what I could do and unfortunately, he said while I had a good heart for caring, there was basically nothing I could do. Dejected, I walked out of his office. However, that dejection turned into defiance as I walked by the lake and saw a crowd of children spoiling the serene lake. 

This visit to the park ranger took place in late March of this year and I am still contemplating my course of action. Should I just accept that nothing can be done and give up? Or should I try to spread awareness by starting a social media page highlighting the environmental transgression occurring at the lake? A friend I confided to suggested that I hold a one person protest for a few hours every weekend to try to both inform and discourage the polluters. She said she might join me in support if time permits. Anyways, I am flummoxed on how to remedy this predicament, but I hope that in the near future I will gain the wisdom to make my neighborhood a bit more environmentally conscious, even if an Asian Karen shrieks at me.