We will be observing Earth Day on April 22. It is our fifty-third year of this important day, having begun in 1970. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin introduced the idea, and it was quickly embraced by a bi-partisan majority in both the Senate and House, and a proclamation was signed by the President. The first year it was observed primarily as a teach-in across the country. Soon other nations and then the United Nations joined in this event to emphasize environmental studies and action.
For a few weeks I have heard the loud call of Sand hill Cranes flying high overhead. Sometimes we can only hear them because they are so high up in the skies that they are out of sight. At other times, as they come closer, they look like prehistoric pterodactyls, with big wings and long legs trailing behind. When they land and we realize they are huge birds. Once they were almost as common as robins, but then they moved toward extinction. Grain farmers hated them and shot them on sight; others tried their meat and decided it was good, and more of them were shot. Now, they are beginning to come back. That is good news for them. The news about other wildlife is not so good.
For decades, each mid-march the black or turkey buzzards returned to Hinckley, Ohio just as the swallows returned to Capistrano, California. The buzzards came back, just as always, but several large flocks have taken up residence in New York City. That has scared a few residents! The reason for their new residence is one we have heard many times and in many circumstances: climate change.
In the early years of the last century, the acclaimed western artist Charlie Russell, lamented the results of the ‘taming of the West’ in his book, Trails Plowed Under. A few years later, in the midst of the 1930’s Dust Bowl, Will Rogers told the nation that the reason for the problem in the Midwest was simple: Millions of acres of prairie grass should never have been plowed under for more farm lands. The grass protected and added to the topsoil. Once it was gone, there was nothing to hold it in place. He warned about the havoc we create by trying to bend nature to our will.
A decade later Aldo Leopold wrote in his 1945 book A Sand County Almanac, “One of the penalties of an ecological education is to live alone in a world of wounds.” He warned of the dangers we create for ourselves and future generations by our reliance on chemical fertilizers, the deforestation in many parts of the country, and damming up rivers that should have been left alone to flow freely. Add to it industrial and municipal sewers that empty into our rivers and streams, oil spills, rain derailments, industrial pollution, and more.
A decade later, Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring. It was a savage attack on our use of chemicals to fertilize farmland that had become sterile because of overuse and pesticides such as DDT. DDT was used to kill mosquitoes, and some of us are of an age to remember running behind the sprayers used at drive in theaters. Even if we survived that act of childhood stupidity, many other insects were poisoned, then eaten by birds, and we began to kill them off. Until some of the worst pesticides were finally banned or limited, our American Bald Eagle, falcons, and other raptors were rapidly moving toward extinction because the egg shells were so thin because of the these chemicals they were crushed by nesting parents. Other birds were dying off, leading to what she called a “silent spring.”
Or perhaps you remember, or heard from the Olds, how some 70 years ago , in 1957 to 1959, there were no cranberries to be found on the store shelves. The reason was simple: Growers had poured copious amounts of the herbicide aminotriazoa into their bogs that the Food and Drug Administration ordered the berries destroyed. Only when the poisons were cleared out of the eco-system could we have cranberries again.
Soon after, Carson’s research inspired men and women of medicine to more carefully explore other chemicals used in our food and environment. When they published their findings a new word was added to our dictionaries: carcinogens. Perhaps we think it is over-used or the medical researchers are over-reacting, but the more chemicals we put into the world around us, and just as importantly, in our bodies, the more we “live alone in a world of pain.” In turn it led to Earth Day.
Nothing has really changed, has it? Big agricultural corporations still crank out hundreds and thousands of tons of insecticides, herbicides, and other chemicals that allow for more grain to be grown to feed livestock on huge feed lots. In turn, we feed lot run-offs and chemical run offs into our watersheds. Just think back a couple of decades when we would go for a Sunday afternoon drive, only to come home with a windshield splattered with bugs. That doesn’t happen any more. As much as we appreciate not spending time cleaning up the carcasses and sun-baked innards, it means there are fewer insects. Fewer insects, and we end up with fewer song birds.
Whether it is a long-term natural cycle of warmth and cold, man-made global warming, or a combination of both, our world is changing. In some ways it seems rather pointless for us as individuals to ruthlessly recycle, use natural fertilizers, and plant flowers for pollinators when other countries are pumping out the chemicals that are destroying us.
Many people are unwilling to sit by in their private ecological pain. From time to time perhaps you also see a small green sign on private property that states the land is a designated wildlife habitat. It is a project from the National Wildlife Fund, and you can easily find more information from them.
I asked a property owner why she and her family had applied for that designation. After all, they have little more than a half-acre of land. She explained, “I did it for us; my family and me. The sign is a constant reminder of our responsibility to care for even this small amount of land. Legally, I guess you could say we own the land, but really, we’re holding it in trust for the next generation. It’s our responsibility to pass it on.”
Her husband added, “You see those little saplings? They’re chestnuts. They were once as plentiful as oaks, and provided food for the pioneers. Then they were cut for lumber, and after that came the blight. They’re slow growing, and we planted them for our grandchildren and great grandchildren’s generations.”
We do what we can, all we can, with what we have. Do those three things and we can accept the quiet comfort of alleviating a portion of our pain.