By Beth Pratt
Somber Reflections on Earth Day, 2025
When I was six years old, a For Sale sign went up in the woods where I used to play. In these woods was a small brook—as we call them in New England—and these woods also bordered the Concord River. I played there frequently, my own peaceable kingdom, and cherished the chance to spend time with the turtles and snakes and squirrels and birds and butterflies and frogs and fish who lived there.
When I saw the For Sale sign, I asked my mother what it meant. She said that houses were going to be built there. I remember after she answered feeling saddened and for the first time my young mind grasped that the wildlife that I considered my friends and neighbors could lose their homes.
It was the first time I realized how vulnerable nature was in human hands.
I went door to door around the neigborhood collecting money to buy the woods and save the wildlife. I think I raised $5. I called the number on the sign. You can guess how this ended.
So perhaps it’s no surprise that here I am five decades later, at age 56, still working to protect wildlife. And in those decades, although there were no shortage of challenges to overcome, what I always observed was a broad level of support—no matter how you voted—for our precious wild heritage and our public lands.
Nixon passed the Endangered Species Act. Ronald Reagan helped with mountain lion protections in California, collaborating with Governor Newsom‘s father. George W. Bush loved national parks. Gerald Ford was a park ranger. I could go on and on, but the point is protecting our public lands and the wildlife that we share our country with was always one of the things that most Americans agreed upon.
So here I sit on this Earth Day reflecting on a lifetime working to protect wildlife and public lands. And I am frightened. I have never in my entire life been this frightened for the future of the wild world.
I never thought that I would have to be on CNN defending national parks in my lifetime. I never thought I would see the dismantling of the Department of the Interior and the handing it over to people who just consider it one more company to sell off and break into little pieces.
This is like a bad horror movie where Wall Street meets Ken Burn’s America’s Best Idea. “Greed is good” was never supposed to apply to Yosemite or Yellowstone or a wildlife refuge. It wasn’t supposed to apply to our black bears or elk or foxes or wolves or monarch butterflies or trout.
I don’t know how to respond to people who are okay with selling off our national heritage. I don’t know what to say to people who are okay with endangered species going extinct. Or who are now making decisions that will absolutely not just harm, but ensure that many wild animals will face death.
Once a bear is killed, there is no do over. Once you bulldoze a sensitive meadow, it can take hundreds of years to come back.
I’ve spent my entire lifetime advocating for our national parks and all of our public lands, as well as the precious wildlife that we share this world with and for the first time I fear that we are going to lose it all.
I don’t know if we can stop this absolute blind, immoral chain of destruction that is happening now. It saddens me greatly. That so many people are not just okay with but actually cheering on the dismantling of our public lands, wildlife protections and the loss of our national heritage is quite disturbing.
What I am thinking about on this Earth Day is monarch butterflies. When I was a little girl monarchs numbered in the millions. And I remember marveling over these wondrous creatures as they fluttered by and seeking out milkweed to find their caterpillars.
This is an animal that is going extinct before our very eyes. The last western monarch count found just over 9000 individuals, down from millions.
I don’t think we’re are going to save the monarch butterfly. How could we now that so many vital environmental protections are going to be both literally and figuratively bulldozed?
I’m in tears right now, because on this Earth Day, I have to face the reality that the monarch butterfly is likely going to be just one animal of many doomed to extinction not just under this administration, but under the watch of millions of Americans who also support their actions.
How dare we rob the world of the monarch butterfly? How dare we be so careless with other life?
I am greatly saddened this Earth Day that I have to reckon with the sobering realization that monarch butterflies are going to likely vanish from this earth because of human failings, I am helpless to stop this, and the best I can do is feel grateful that I at least lived in a time where there were monarch butterflies, and that I got to see their beautiful stained-glass wings soar into the sky.
