A sheep became stuck with a child’s plastic seat around its neck after the rubbish was dumped nearby.

Christopher Lee Thomas, 26, saw the animal in Ebbw Vale, south Wales, and alerted its owner as it ran off before he could help.

In a post on Facebook, he said he ‘wished he could have done more’ for the animal.

Martin Montague, creator of the fly-tipping reporting app and website ClearWaste.com has urged officials to slam fly-tippers with higher fines.

‘Fly-tipping is really bad for the environment and can be fatal to wildlife’, he said. ‘Fly-tippers have no consciences. Seeing this poor sheep makes me really angry.

‘At ClearWaste.com we’re campaigning put an end to the scourge of fly-tipping wherever it is.

‘We need higher fines, the vehicles of offenders crushed or confiscated and prison terms for persistent fly-tippers.

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‘The fact that so many local authorities issue no fines or and prosecute no waste criminals at all is appalling and sends out the message that fly-tippers can operate in those areas with impunity.’

It comes after a seal was found ‘days from choking to death’ on the rocks by St Mary’s Lighthouse, off the coast of Whitley Bay.

The exhausted male was running out of time after plastic sheeting was found wrapped tightly around its neck.

It struggled to move across the rocks before mum Vicki Sinclair raised the alarm.

‘You could tell the seal was panicking. It was awful. I could not remove the plastic from around its neck’, she said. ‘The tarpaulin was really tight around the neck. It was struggling.

‘I don’t know how the tarpaulin got wrapped around its neck, but seal pups are inquisitive – chances are it swam towards the tarpaulin and gone to play with it.

‘A couple of weeks before this incident, I reported another seal in distress which was wrapped in fishing wire.’

Paul Whittle, 41, a volunteer for the British Divers Marine Life Rescue, used scissors to relieve the seal.

He warned: ‘If it had not been reported by Vicki, the seal would not have lasted another day or two. It would have choked to death.’

‘Stories like this, not just here, but all over, are on the rise’, he said. ‘If people are walking down the beach and see any plastic, just take that extra two or three seconds to put it in the bin.’

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