Daily Local News, 04/20/2020 - Earth Day: Everyone can make a difference, even during a pandemic

By Jen Samuel

WEST CHESTER — Extinction threatens to destroy life on earth at an alarming rate. At least, in 2020, if you are an elephant or a butterfly.

Then again, fear of a new extinction-level event, the COVID-19 pandemic, is worrisome for most humans. Fear of death.

“The current rate of species extinction is far higher than the average during the past 10 million years,” said Kristen Pope on Mar 24, 2020 in an investigative report started by The Yale Center for Environmental Communication and Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Wednesday April 22, is Earth Day. The year is 2020. With unprecedented worldwide, national and statewide lockdowns it has been quite noteworthy thus far. And where there are less humans, or at least, less invasive acts of destruction upon ecological habitats, wildlife in places like Venice, Italy have again begun to thrive.

​"The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970 and I was a senior at Downingtown High School,” said state Rep. Carolyn Comitta, D-156th, of West Chester. “Our first Earth Day project was to walk to school while picking up trash along the roads. There was an energy that day — a determination and pride that we were all environmental champions, and we were going to change the world, just like our young people today."

Recently, Delco resident Sarah DiTomasso took her son and daughter to walk along a Pennsylvania trail after a nearly six-week hiatus due to the governor’s ongoing stay-at-home order.

She brought her children to Gillespie Park on Sycamore Avenue in Clifton Heights.

The DiTomasso family, again surrounded by nature, was an especially wonderful moment for her son, Giovanni DiTomasso, 8.

“It was our first time outside after weeks in quarantine and he literally was loving the rock and laid there for about 10 minutes relishing in nature.”

Back at Yale, in her research, Pope found the current rate of species extinction is far higher than the average during the past 10 million years. One million of about 8 million animal and plant species worldwide are threatened with extinction, she said, citing the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services based in Bonn, Germany.

Pope’s journalism shed light on a National Audubon Society finding which, after studying 140 million birds across a myriad of species, determined changes to the environment are imperiling two-thirds North American avian species closer to crossing the brink of extinction.

Millions of citizens around the world are working to save their favorite species from extinction. And for Adams Cassinga, founding director of Conserv Congo in the DRC, it equates to a simple matter of life or death. Right or wrong. Truth or fallacy.

Cassinga is a Mandela Washington fellow and works with game changers at the University of Delaware in Newark, close to Landenberg in southern Chester County. He’s traveled across the Atlantic on a few trips to study in America and fight to make a difference.

As a former journalist, and African ranger, Earth Day holds special significance to Cassinga.

“Earth Day reminds me of the many favors Mother Earth has done for us as humans, irrespective of our irresponsibility toward her, and that we, in return, should feel the need to return at least one of those favors,” Cassinga said. “It does not have to be a major thing. Something as simple as planting a tree.”

At the London Grove Friends Meeting House near Unionville in Chester County, stands the oldest known white oak tree in Pennsylvania. Its roots run deep and date back to the gentle society of the Lenni-Lenape, the Native Americans who once lived here and migrated along the Delaware River spanning New York and Maryland to the Chesapeake Bay and an undammed Susquehanna River.

Elsewhere elephants are in peril. 200 years ago, 20 million African elephants roamed the continent. By 1910, there were 10 million left at best. In 2013, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service said more than 30,000 elephants were poached annually and there were 300,000 left alive on the planet. It is estimated 100 elephants are poached per day. Sometimes, less are killed in a given area as the herds eventually become completely wiped out.

Some elephants flee along ancient migratory routes from places like Zimbabwe and Tanzania to Botswana, where recently ‘trophy’ kills of these gentle giants have resumed. Typically, at an average of $30,000 per permit, Americans pay for this service over most other nationalities.

Cassinga said of the ongoing “ivory wars” in the Congo: “It is alarming, critical and maybe even revolting. In the last two years, the trend of ivory seizures made across the globe from the Democratic Republic of the Congo is overwhelming.”

He said most of these seizures — more than 95 percent — of the total volume of seized ivory and pangolin scales; products linked to the DRC stem from major trafficking instances, half of which occurred between 2017 and 2019.

Indeed, in 2017 the University of Utah found that most ivory seized at international ports — more than 90 percent — derived from elephants killed less than four years ago in Africa.

Said Cassinga, the size and frequency of ivory and pangolin scales shipments originating from the DRC suggests that this wildlife trade is characterized by industrial-scale trafficking run by organized syndicates.

As for what people can do to make a difference and help stop acts of extinction, there are options.

“People have got to get involved, even in the smallest ways such as addressing the issue of wildlife trafficking as a global issue and not just as an African problem,” Cassinga said. “Creating awareness by informing your close ones and of course supporting grassroots level organizations fighting this scourge.”

He said good people around the world can advocate for decent and acceptable laws in favor of wildlife and wild places.

“These uncertain times are a reminder of our responsibility to be good stewards of our natural resources,” said state Sen. Thomas Killion, R-9th, of Middletown. “Protecting and preserving our environment has always been an important priority of mine and I’m proud of my 100 percent rating from the Pennsylvania League of Conservation Voters in their most recent legislative scorecard.”

“Earth Day is taking on a special meaning this year,” said state Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-19th, of West Whiteland. “We must take our impact on the Earth and our environment seriously because it can and does have a direct bearing on our health, safety, and prosperity.”

U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-6th, of Easttown, said, “We have one planet Earth that we call home. That’s it. Earth Day is about both celebrating that home and recommitting to its protection and preservation.”

“As the state remains gripped in uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, two things remain clear,” said Secretary Cindy Adams Dunn of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, “Pennsylvanians are appreciating peace and solitude of our state parks and forestlands, our trails and local parks in unprecedented numbers; and, often as family units, discovering the natural world around them as close as their backyards. Both are so important as we mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day."

“While daily gratitude and action is the best way to honor our home," said Ellen Ferretti, director of the Brandywine Conservancy. "Earth Day challenges all of us to focus our attention on our environment together on one day for local, regional and global impact."