Earth Day focuses on preserving for posterity natural habitats like this one in the Middlebury Land Trust’s Tuttle Preserve in Middlebury. (Curtiss Clark photo)
#MIDDLEBURY #EARTHDAY
By JANINE SULLIVAN-WILEY
You are invited to join the town’s Earth Day observance by joining the trash patrol Saturday, April 22, at 10 a.m. at Meadowview Park to pick the spot you would like to clean up in honor of Earth Day. If you can’t join the group at Meadowview, just pick a spot to adopt, and do our shared environment a good turn.
Every year since a tiny start in 2006 (and some earlier efforts in the 1990s), people have cleaned along the Greenway. Participants have included the Middlebury Women’s Club, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, Middlebury Land Trust (MLT) members and, more recently, the Better Homes and Gardens/Bannon and Hebert office.
Besides the Greenway, folks have cleaned our parks, roadways and preserves. The town Parks and Recreation Department has been indispensable in supplying the necessary equipment – trash bags, pick sticks and, in some years, shirts as well – and then picking up the filled bags and taking them to the transfer station.
Although the Middlebury Land Trust is an organization and Earth Day is an observance, they share many values and came into being at roughly the same time. The MLT formed in 1969 for the purpose of preserving natural areas, including forests, meadows, swamps, marshes, ponds and streams. This also preserves habitats for the creatures that live in them and for the people who can then enjoy their unspoiled beauty.
Earth Day (April 22 each year) began in 1970. It followed a developing concern about the degradation of the environment that was first brought into focus in 1962 with Rachel Carson’s hugely influential book, “Silent Spring.” Her book documented the detrimental effects on the environment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides and led to a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses.
After “Silent Spring” was published, things began to gain momentum. In 1969, an activist named John McConnell proposed a day to honor the earth that would be celebrated on the first day of spring in March. A month later, Gaylord Nelson, then a Wisconsin senator, built upon that with an event designed as a giant teach-in and protest in the U.S.
On that first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, the Earth Network (now the national organization for this event) reported, “20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies … Groups that had been fighting against (many things including) … toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.”
That event was credited as the impetus behind the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts. And now Earth Day is celebrated in more than 193 countries each year.
In addition to cleaning up litter, you can observe Earth Day by supporting local and national organizations that have pro-environmental policies. Mother Earth needs each and every one of us to protect and preserve our wonderful natural heritage. The founders in 1970 got us off to a good start; it is up to us to maintain those efforts. Happy Earth Day!
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