Wanting to clean the oceans and getting rid of all the tons of plastic that damages the environment, especially animal life, is not a liberal or conservative issue.
It’s what most decent people want.
I'm a conservative and an environmentalist. I have been an avid outdoors man since my earliest childhood memories of hunting, fishing, and camping with my father. He instilled in me principles of conservation like only taking legal game, and no more than you intend to eat or donate, and always leave a place cleaner than when you got there.
When I moved to the coast, I developed a love of deep sea and coastal sport fishing, and my passion for big game hunting has waned, but those principles still stick with me. I practice catch and release on sport fish, and only harvest category 3 table fare and above. I follow all regulations and comply with all laws, seasons, and bag limits. And the fastest way to never be invited back with me is to throw trash overboard. And I'm active in local conservation groups.
I think the political division stems from differing methods. Conservation stems from strict individual adherence to the practices like the ones laid out above, and one of the fundamental tenets of conservatism is conservationism.
There is a growing stigma within liberalism that implies activism equals conservationism. Speaking in generalities, many of the enviro-nuts from that camp tend to think the problem is just awareness, and that they need to convert other people to their way of thinking in order to be effective. They don't need to
DO anything. It's everyone else that doesn't understand the issues and need to be educated. And so often times their efforts are directed towards funding their awareness campaign than to the actual cause. These are the types of people who will hold a rally intending to raise awareness, yet totally trash the venue and leave.
Miami, being one of the sport fishing hotbeds in the country and also one of the most beautiful places to be in the world, is uniquely and directly impacted by anything related to the sea, and doesn't really fit with the general theme above. But across the nation, this is a pretty accurate assessment, albeit a broad generalization. Liberals who have never seen a tree that isn't federally protected preaching conservation practices to conservatives who have practiced sustainable land and wildlife populations for decades.
What makes this uniform project not fit into that generalization, is that they recognized a problem, identified a solution, did something about it, and are now simply trying to raise funding for continued conservation and research efforts. This is how it's supposed to be done, and as a conservative, I am 100% on board with this.