Earth Day is just another day for Seattle's EarthCorps — but still worth marking

When Earth Day started in 1970, vehicles running on leaded gas averaged 12 miles a gallon on U.S. highways. The year before, an oil slick on Cleveland's polluted Cuyahoga River famously caught fire. That first Earth Day involved teach-ins and demonstrations, which soon led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and legislation like the Clean Air Act.

Now, Earth Day involves over a billion people worldwide, including volunteers and staffers with the Seattle-based EarthCorps. The nonprofit’s development manager Kesia Cisse told KUOW’s Kim Malcolm about her organization's work.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Kim Malcolm: When you meet someone who may not have heard of EarthCorps before, what do you tell them about the work and the mission?

Kesia Cisse: I love folks who haven't heard about EarthCorps, because it's just an opportunity to share the great work that our organization does. We're based in Magnuson Park in Seattle, and we do two things at once that are really inseparable.

We restore natural areas around Puget Sound — shorelines, forests, salmon streams — as well as urban green spaces. And in tandem with that, we develop the next generation of environmental leaders. So, there's real synergy there. Every year we bring together young adults from across the U.S. and the world for paid, hands-on conservation training.

They get to work alongside each other, learn from our project managers and our team, and restore habitats in our local region. Our mission is really about healing land and growing leaders at the same time.

Tell us how local EarthCorps staff and volunteers are marking Earth Day today.

In a lot of ways, today is kind of another day for us. It's just business as usual. We have five crews in the field all around the Puget Sound. In addition to that, we had a special volunteer event at Kubota Gardens. We had over 50 people sign up to come and plant trees and native shrubs to celebrate and mark this wonderful day.

Is there a recent project in the Puget Sound area that you think people should know about?

There's a wide breadth there, but one that we're really proud of is our work with Friends of Green Lake where we restored a frog pond and created habitat for the Pacific Chorus (Tree) Frog to come back.

One of the community members there talks about walking along Green Lake and remembering the sound, but that has gone away in recent years because the Chorus Frog has been outcompeted by fish in Green Lake. We know we're not going to get rid of all of those fish, but we're able to create a sanctuary so that the frogs can come back, and we can hear them sing again.

Tell me how your organization is faring in the current political climate.

Yes, it is a challenging moment for nonprofits across this country. Federal funding for conservation corps has been challenged. We were not immune to that. Last year we actually lost our funding for a period of time. It was subsequently reinstated, but that really challenged the organization. We had to do layoffs, and it interrupted our ability to deliver the good work we do.

This year, we're still continuing to build our reserves and get back to operations so that we can promote the climate resilience that this region needs through our work, and train the young people that we need to do it.

Kesia, there are a lot of doomsayers out there. What do you say to folks who might tell you they see the world is heating, there's not a lot of political will to deal with it, why bother?

You know, I understand that. I think that it's easy to be pessimistic, but I think there's actually so much good out there. There are so many folks wanting to do the work. I see it every day when our crews come back. They're muddy, they've been digging in the dirt or removing species that have made a monoculture. We see the effects of being able to address the challenge every day.

We're not the only folks addressing the challenge by any means. Really, our model is meant to be a movement where we're giving people the skills to go forward and be able to continue to do the good work. That gives me hope. It gives me hope that there are people that want to do it. We have the skills to be able to meet the moment. And it's vital. It's vital for our water, it's vital for our air, and for our region.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.