Taylors Mistake resident Katia Kalyani was walking the Godley Head track on Thursday with a friend when she found the ewe with her leg trapped in the wire near the far end of the Boulder Bay beach.
"There was trash there, metal sheets and things like that," Kalyani said.
"She must have gotten trapped and couldn’t get out."
Two lambs were lying on top of the sheep when Kalyani arrived about 1pm.
"It was heartbreaking really," she said.
Kalyani said she was not sure how long the sheep had been there, but thought it looked recent.
Unsure of what to do, she turned to Facebook and posted about the situation on the ‘Sumner, New Zealand’ page.
A page member supplied a phone number for a sheep farmer in the area who Kalyani messaged about 4pm.
The farmer said he headed down to the site in the late afternoon. He found the dead ewe but not her lambs.
He was not sure where the wire and rubbish next to it had come from.
He said the sheep looked like it may have fallen down a nearby hill prior to getting stuck in the wire.
The heartbreaking image struck a chord with Kalyani, who used to organise ocean clean-ups in the Philippines.
"Trash on the beach is a personal thing for me,” she said.
Kalyani has lived in Taylors Mistake for three years and in Sumner for nine years before that.
She thinks some people need to be aware of the consequences of their littering.
“They dump something and they just go home - well that cost a life and potentially to her kids as well.
"It’s sad our activities can impact nature in this way. I’m frustrated.
“It’s something that could have been avoided,” she said.
