By Bob Conrad and Kristen Hackbarth | Additional photos by Michelle Rene Dumont

Thousands of plastic duckies on Saturday were accidentally released into the Truckee River in downtown Reno as part of Nevada Humane Society’s Duck Race and Festival. Many floated right past the finish line. 

The ducks weren’t actually racing – they were a ceremonial part of the event held annually as a fundraiser for the Nevada Humane Society.  Donors “adopt” ducks at $5 each, and 20,000 of those are released into the Truckee River in a mock race. 

Some just didn’t want to stop swimming yesterday. They breached a fence stretched across the river near Wingfield Park intended to corral and help remove them from the river. 

“It’s hard to estimate how many escaped but the majority have been collected,” Taylor Todd, the nonprofit’s events manager, told This Is Reno.

Hundreds of the ducks were seen today in the river as far as east of the McCarran bridge in Sparks.

What happened

According to a witness to yesterday’s downtown event, the 2 p.m. release of the ducks was postponed to 2:30 p.m. due to “technical issues,” then pushed back again to 2:45 p.m. 

“The delay caused by RFD had to do with a determination that we didn’t have enough water rescue personnel on scene to have quite so many event volunteers in the river,” Reno City Manager Doug Thornley told This Is Reno.

The witness said RFD gave the all clear to event volunteers further up the river, who released the ducks at 2:40 p.m. Then came the breach.

Todd said event partners, including Sparks and Reno fire departments and the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office HASTY team, scrambled to contain the ducks and rescue them out of the river with additional nets. 

“HASTY team, staff and volunteers worked until dark to gather ducks from the river. We’re continuing our patrol efforts to recapture stragglers,” Todd added.

A concentration of stray ducks was viewed in the river near the Reno-Sparks border. Some had continued their migration down the river.

“They’re everywhere,” a fisherman in Sparks said.  

People at one homeless encampment had gathered ducks and assembled them into a decorative sculpture.

City: Humane Society responsible for cleanup

City Manager Thornley said the Humane Society is responsible for the clean-up effort. 

“I’m sure the special events people will have suggestions [regarding] how to prevent this sort of thing from happening again,” he told This Is Reno. “[It’s] probably too early to determine whether the permit is an issue, [and we] want to drill down on exactly what happened before making any decisions about the future.” 

Todd, with the Humane Society, said the organization acted quickly.

“We immediately took action and took the fencing further down the river with the help of Sparks Fire to begin collecting the escaped ducks while working with our myriad partners,” she said. “Reno Fire Department with the help of volunteers were able to gather ducks along the shoreline.” 

HASTY team volunteers were retrieving the ducks near the Lake Street bridge Sunday.

Neoma Jardon with the Downtown Reno Partnership said downtown ambassadors were also picking up ducks.

“We are keeping an eye out for the yellow duckies, and where we can safely access them for retrieval we will grab them (our trash pickers actually work pretty well),” she told This Is Reno. 

Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful Executive Director Darcy Phillips headed down to the Truckee River Sunday to see the extent of the duck debacle. KTMB has organized Truckee River cleanups for nearly 20 years, with this year’s scheduled for Sept. 16. 

“We are rallying right now to see if we can figure out how to help with this, because this is what we do,” she said. 

KTMB’s river cleanups, including the one planned next month, are at sites from Verdi to Lockwood, and have gone as far as Wadsworth in the past. But once the Truckee gets to Wadsworth – nearly 40 miles from Wingfield Park – it flows through the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation and into Pyramid Lake. 

Phillips said cleaning up ducks along the river’s banks can be done by volunteers, but getting them out of the water is more difficult.

“Cleanup in the river can be dangerous and we work with the Reno Fire Department Wet Team and volunteers from Truckee River Flyfishers to clear trash and debris from in the Truckee’s waters,” she added. “It’s not safe for volunteers or untrained individuals to enter the river in many areas for trash cleanup and we don’t advocate for that.” 

Those interested in helping with any of KTMB’s cleanup efforts can volunteer at https://www.ktmb.org/volunteer.

UPDATE: The Humane Society announced on its website it was holding a clean-up effort tomorrow: https://volunteer.nevadahumanesociety.org/need/detail/?need_id=838461