An Ironic Way to Celebrate World Environment Day

June 5 is World Environment Day

World Environment Day is sort of a global version of Earth Day. It was first established in 1972 by the United Nations General Assembly, two years after the first Earth Day in America was celebrated in 1970. The first World Environment Day was held on June 5, 1973, and it has been celebrated every June 5 for the last 42 years.

I have one poignant and rather painful memory of a particular World Environment Day. It occurred when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in Honduras, Central America.

As a PCV, I was assigned to a “host country agency” – an NGO (non-governmental organization) named the Honduran Ecological Association (or Asociación Hondureña de Ecología in Spanish). I served the Association as an asesor técnico (technical advisor) in the Caribbean port town of La Ceiba for two and half years.

One June 5, the Honduran Ecological Association participated in a World Environment Day celebration in the parque central (central park) of La Ceiba. One of our exhibits – a favorite of mine – was a poster of a beautiful jaguar posed on a branch in the rainforest; the poster captured this wild, endangered feline in all its majesty and mystery.

As I was walking on a busy street toward the central park to help manage our exhibit, two strangers wearing cowboy hats approached me. From their attire and hats and self-effacing demeanor they were obviously campesinos (rural peasants). One of them was lugging a burlap sack over his shoulder, which he lowered to the pavement. They beckoned me to look inside.

These two fellows had presumably singled me out because I was obviously a foreigner, probably an American with more disposable income than the typical Honduran local. I knew they were trying to sell me something that I probably wouldn’t be interested in, but out of curiosity, I peeked into the sack.

And was horror-struck.

To my everlasting shock and disgust, there was a crumpled jaguar hide! Judging by its raw condition, not long before, it had enveloped a living, breathing animal. I was utterly taken aback at the irony of this moment – here I was headed to a World Environment Day event where we were displaying a poster of a jaguar to honor the beauty and value of this endangered creature as a living being. And right before my eyes was all that was left of a dead jaguar that had been poached for profit.

I was so upset that I completely disregarded all pretense of the cultural sensitivity that the Peace Corps insisted its Volunteers exemplify at all times. I began chewing out these two humble men for single-handedly obliterating an entire species. And their response to this arrogant, angry American upbraiding them in their own country? “Así es, señor … así es (“That’s right, sir … that’s right”) they repeated respectfully and with apparent remorse.

Indignant and still seething, I turned on my heels and left them, hastening toward our exhibit that included a mere painting of a jaguar, rather the real article that I’d just seen.

I’m certain that these two poor men continued looking for customers until they found one less scrupulous than I, or one less cognizant of wildlife laws. It was after all highly illegal to import the hide of such an endangered species into the United States.

When you’re impoverished and you’re carrying around the equivalent of six months’ income in a burlap sack, and you’ve got many children to feed, you don’t abandon this asset just because some damn foreigner tells you off, however conscientious you may be. Your own survival, and your family’s, comes first. That’s the way nature made us and every other species, after all.

The problem is that there are more and more of us. And our tools and technology have given us immense power. This combination of unchecked growth in human numbers and mindless or rudderless technological potency is now overpowering the natural world and many of the most magnificent creatures that grace it.  Ultimately, unless we make far better use of our brains, hearts and souls, we will undermine our own well-being and survival as well.

The webpage for World Environment Day urges us to “Celebrate the biggest day for positive environmental action!”

I encourage you to do your part.