In the desert outside Dubai, piles of sun-bleached bones dot the landscape. These are the remains of Arabian camels that once roamed the dunes. But they’re not just bones. Beneath a layer of windswept sand lies something truly alarming.

In hundreds of these hollowed out ribcages, researchers at 5 Gyres have found enormous tangles of plastic. Made up of plastic bags and polypropylene rope, the masses vary in size — some as small as a basketball and others as big as a large suitcase. Each one has caused a camel’s death, by way of gut blockages, bacterial sepsis, dehydration, or malnutrition.

It’s heartbreaking, but what’s happening to camels is not unique.

In the desert, food sources are limited. To a camel’s eye, if it’s not sand, it’s food. As a result, masses called bezoars naturally form in camels’ guts, made up of indigestible matter like hair or plant fibers. But when synthetic material enters the digestive tract, like a plastic bag clinging to the branches of an acacia tree, the masses turn deadly. Researchers have dubbed these “polybezoars,” and dissection reveals that they’re made up of thousands of individual bags.

In 5 Gyres’ recent study, polybezoars led to a regional camel mortality rate of 1%. The news has caused heightened concern in the Middle East, where camels have proven essential to a traditional nomadic lifestyle. In fact, the study’s findings have prompted the government of the United Arab Emirates — a country whose economy is dominated by oil and petroleum, the building blocks of plastic — to signal its strong support for a global plastic treaty.

Now is the time to build on this momentum.