Paul Szmal: And good morning, everybody. Welcome to your Tuesday. It is April the 22nd, 2025. This is FLX Morning on Finger Lakes Newsradio. Cloudy skies, temperature at 52 right now. I'm Paul Small. We joined up with Greg Conroy with news throughout the course of the morning, but I have a guest in studio here. We're counting down to Earth Day 2025. Brian Stachok from Cornell Cooperative Extension is here to kind of talk about Earth Day, how it all got started and what it means.
Ryan Staychock: Yeah. Good morning, Paul. Good morning to all the listeners in the Finger Lakes region. It is Earth Day. Yes. And it's happening right now. Today is April 22nd. It happens every year on April 22nd. It's celebrated. And Earth Day is a day, you know, for many people like myself, I'm a forester by training, but Earth Day is every single day, Paul, especially for our agricultural community and people that enjoy fresh air, clean air, clean water, and clean soil. Earth Day is every day. But today is a day that we could celebrate and honor the day that marks the anniversary really of the environmental movement that started back in 1970.
So Earth Day started back in 1970, and surprisingly with that history back in those days, it inspired 20 million Americans to demonstrate against the negative environmental impacts associated with about, you know, 150 years of industrial development. Now, Paul, you may know, but I'm born and raised in Erie County, something I usually don't like to tell people about. I spent a lot of money on taxes back there. But my great-grandfather was a saloon owner back in Niagara Falls back in the 1930s. So I have family and stuff that lived there and grew up there. So when I learned as a young person about Love Canal and with the impacts that happened there, super, super impactful on my life.
So that Love Canal that happened back in the 60s kind of, you know, is a tad of a little bit of history that kind of led up to the movement of environmental, the Earth Day in 1970. But what's interesting about Earth Day, it led to the creation of a bunch of environmental laws that were signed by Republican Richard Nixon. And the environmental laws are aimed to protect ecosystems and protect fish and wildlife, things that everybody cares about. It established a whole bunch of government oversight agencies. Now, sometimes they're great and sometimes they're bad, but the mission of these agencies are generally pretty positive, right, for everybody. The mission of the EPA, for example, is to protect human health and the environment. It also established the National Environmental Education Act to provide resources to educational institutions.
OSHA, which we don't like to hear about those things, especially when I'm operating chainsaws. I don't like people telling me what I have to do, but they're really good ideas, right? PPE is a good idea, personal protective equipment to maintain safety for people. These are good ideas that maybe I would not have been a subject to if a hundred years ago. Clean Water Act, right? That came out. The Endangered Species Act that protects fish, wildlife and plants. All of these laws were passed by Congress, overwhelmingly, and signed by Richard Nixon following the first Environmental Earth Day.
So it's a way that we can at least honor that we are in tune and we're part of nature and we depend on clean air, clean water and clean soil for healthy environments.
Paul Szmal: How has Earth Day evolved over the years? As someone that was born in the mid-70s, I think that it seems to me, and this is kind of going off script, but it seems to me like when we look at Earth Day and what it means, maybe it was celebrated a little bit more during the environmental movement in the 1970s. I think that's a fair statement. Is that fair to say?
Ryan Staychock: Yeah. More people were excited about it. There was more and more things happening. More people were motivated. More people were ... There was a lot of issues coming down with healthy lawsuits against corporations that were impacting people's health. Growing up more in the late 80s and 90s, I think it kind of petered off. I think people become a little complacent and yet when we see things happening, like right now, people are concerned about these massive storms that are happening. Why is that happening? We're asking questions like, why are we getting torrential rainstorms? And I think that we're starting to see more of a younger generation, the younger, the teenagers, 20 year olds.
What is the girl's name that ... It escapes me now, but there's the activist. She certainly has brought a lot of pizzazz to the idea of environmentalism. But Earth Day itself, I could tell you today, I woke up, we talked to my children about it. It's just a way that we can kind of respond and address, hey, we depend on the earth. We depend on clean air, clean water, and clean soil. Things that we are very lucky to have in the Finger Lakes region here. People don't think about air quality. When I lived in Colorado, air quality was not good. Sometimes the air quality in city urban areas is not good. It is fantastic in the Finger Lakes region, right?
So we love living here for a lot of the environmental amenities, such as clean water, our lakes, our freshwater lakes, clean soil, our farmers. Agriculture is one of our most productive professions within New York State. So we're really lucky to have a pretty good environment for us here in the Finger Lakes. I can't say that about all the other places. If you lived in Love Canal back in the 70s, it was not pretty solid, right? You're probably getting bamboozled by some companies. So that's why I think I'm here today, is to kind of honor this day and bring awareness to your listeners.
But it's not only Earth Day this week, which is always celebrated on April 22nd. Another cool day that kind of celebrates environmentalism is Arbor Day. Oh, yeah. And Arbor Day is cool because I'm a tree guy. I love trees. Right. I think one of my favorite sayings is trees are the answer, right? And because I'm a forester, obviously. But I think that there's a lot of value in trees and the idea of Arbor Day, which is usually celebrated on the last Friday of April, it kind of depends on where you live. But Arbor Day is celebrated this Friday, April 25th. It's a special day that honors people and encourages people to plant trees and care for trees. Right.
So it started, which is really interesting. It started in Nebraska in 1872. Wow. Yes. I didn't realize it. Super long time ago. I didn't realize it went back A, that far and B, Nebraska of all places.
Paul Szmal: Of all places. So for people that have gone through Nebraska, there's not a lot of trees there. Right. Right. Great book called Undaunted Courage that if you ever wanted to read it, it talks about the landscape. But that's the prairie, right? Right. The Great Plains. Right.
Ryan Staychock: And so you find a lot of your trees along your riparian areas around rivers. So that it started in Nebraska was pretty cool. In 1872, just a couple of years after Yellowstone was established as the first national park. But that was started by a man named Sterling Morton. And he wanted to help make the land greener. So on the first Arbor Day back in 1872, people planted over one million trees. And this is back in 1872. This is in 1872. Yeah. It was kind of remarkable, right? Right. They didn't have internet back then, Paul. No. There was no internet or texting, right? Yeah. So people, to motivate that many people to plant is really quite encouraging and speaks to the wonders of human beings and how good they could get motivated.
So today, Arbor Day is celebrated all around the world. And it reminds us about the importance of trees and how trees are important in our lives. So you may ask, well, what in God's name can I do to help celebrate Earth Day and Arbor Day? Well, there's a lot of things you could do. There's a lot of things. Right? Number one, plant trees, right? Go out and plant trees because they're really actually good things. And what's a great opportunity for everybody, I'd like to bring awareness, is that the Cuyahoga County Soil and Water Conservation District, they are offering spring tree sale until Tuesday, April 29th. So visit the Cuyahoga County website. Again, this is only in Cuyahoga County, right? So each county has a different Soil and Water Conservation District. Go to the Cuyahoga County one. You could place an order and get tree seedlings that are super great rate and plant those trees. They're also going to have a pop-up sale day that you can learn about on their website. But again, go to the Cuyahoga County website, see how you can get some trees. If you're looking to put a windbreak in, if you're looking to have some trees growing in your yard for conservation purposes, visit that website.
Recycle right, right? We have to recycle right to keep our recycling stream nice and healthy and keep tanglers such as plastic bags, hoses, and things out of the recycle. Learn how to recycle the right way. Make sure you put the right things in those blue bins at your curbside. Reduce, reuse, and recycle. These are things we've been hearing about for a while. That's about conserving resources so you don't waste. You don't want to waste money. Why would you waste things that you pay money for, right? You can also draw down how much pollution we create.
Paul, I love chainsaws. I love two-stroke engines. The power-to-weight ratio of those are really remarkable. Yeah, and effective for the purpose. Super effective. I love them very much. But I take responsibility that I'm polluting every time I use them, right? I use a 50-to-1 gas-to-oil mix in most of those, and I'm burning that oil right into the atmosphere. So if I want to draw down how much I'm polluting, I try to make up for it in other ways every day. I try to drive a car that is efficient on gasoline. I try to reduce how many trips I have to make into town. I try to ride my bike or walk whenever I can. So that's just one way to do it. But for other people that have fishing boats, if you want to do the environmentally right thing, clean, drain, and dry your boat when you're going lake-to-lake fishing or if you're navigating, right? Identify invasive species that might be on your boat, and you don't want to take those to other watersheds.
Paul Szmal: Exactly. So just make sure that you take care. And really, it's about responsibility, right?
Ryan Staychock: Being responsible for your actions and taking the responsible approach. You can also always support the circular economy. If we want to recycle and we want things to develop a really good economy for recycling, support the circular economy by buying things that are recycled. Look for that tag that says that. Join a watershed group. Join the Lake Friendly Living Coalition. Become a Cornell Cooperative Extension master gardener, a master forest owner, a master composter, or become a Cornell climate steward. Serve on your local planning and zoning boards if you care about things. Save water. Turn off your lights. Don't put lights on if you don't need them. Reduce how much energy you use, right? Engage in the solutions sector. Work or start a business that uses technology that capitalizes on research and development around solutions that can help our environment be more sustainable. Right. Yeah.
So this week, we're really excited. Tomorrow and Thursday, we're going to have a couple of guests come on in the morning to talk about solutions in the U.S. So I really appreciate that, Paul, very much.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, not a problem. Appreciate you being here, Ryan. Thank you. Oh, my pleasure. Yeah, wonderful. Have a wonderful Earth Day, everybody.
Ryan Staychock: Absolutely. It is 7.50 on FLX Morning.
