Heather King was overjoyed when she got the letter from a fourth-grader at a Portland elementary school in December.

“Hi Heather,” the note read. “I am nine years old. I am starting a club to help stop pollution and we’re trying to raise money to donate money to you. If you have any tips please let me know.”

The author, a girl named Lila, had been inspired after seeing a fundraising letter from Willamette Riverkeeper, where King works as deputy director. They met and, over hot chocolate, hatched a plan for a spare change fundraiser at Lila’s school. Within a few weeks, she’s collected more than $100. All that was left to do was celebrate with a pizza party.

Then the coronavirus hit. The pizza party was postponed. A planned river cleanup at Kelley Point Park, scheduled for the spring, was supposed to give the kids a real-life example of how the money they raised was being spent. With orders to stay at home, the event was canceled.

“There are so many pieces of this that are heartbreaking,” King said. “I love this organization and the work that we do. That we can’t be out there doing it, it's just sad.”

Willamette Riverkeeper is just one of countless environmental organizations that have had to cancel or overhaul plans after gearing up for a big celebration Wednesday, Earth Day’s 50th anniversary. Like nearly every other aspect of daily life, those plans were thrown into disarray by the coronavirus, and the groups face daunting challenges they are scrambling to face.

For example, Earth Day Oregon, a relatively new organization in its second year, has had to cancel or postpone dozens of fundraising events and sponsorship deals. Workshops planned to take place in the real world have been moved to video-conferencing platforms.

And the usual rallies will fill no streets this year, as societies across the globe have been effectively shuttered. Instead, organizers are taking their movement fully online, with talks and movies and gatherings held on streaming apps and Zoom calls.

While Earth Day itself might be tempered by distancing protocols, the work of environmental groups remains as important as ever, they say, even as it grows harder to do.

Environmental issues remain a concern

Anne Kolibaba Larkin interviewed Gov. Tom McCall on Earth Day in 1970. (Photo courtesy Gary L. Scott)

Earth Day got its start in 1970 when Denis Hayes, then a young activist, helped organize a day of nationwide teach-ins focusing on environmental issues. About 20 million people, 10% of the U.S. population, are estimated to have taken part in rallies, demonstrations and protests across the country that first Earth Day. Soon after, President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency.

In 1990, Hayes was again tapped to broaden the reach of Earth Day rallies with a global audience in mind, and the event ballooned to 200 million participants in 141 countries. The 40th anniversary of Earth Day in 2010 saw more than 1 billion people participate worldwide, according to organizers, and today it’s billed as the largest secular observance in the world.

Then-City Commissioner Earl Bluemenauer (from left); Denis Hayes, international chairman for Earth Day 1990; and then-US Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., join the Portland Earth Day observance with an Earth ball.

The spread of the pandemic has changed how those billion people will gather, but it hasn’t affected the importance of environmental activism, advocates say.

Even with physical distancing and stay-home orders, not every aspect of society has ground to a halt. In late March, the EPA announced it didn’t have the staff to fully enforce environmental regulations and that some companies would be charged with monitoring themselves. Last week, the agency effectively loosened regulations on releases of mercury, a highly potent neurotoxin.

Public access to public lands has been mostly prohibited, but industries like grazing, mining and timber harvesting have been deemed essential business. In the forests of the Pacific Northwest, logging continues, albeit at a reduced clip, as reported by the Salem Statesman-Journal.

For groups like Oregon Wild, normal work would include keeping tabs on those timber sales and logging contracts, said Sean Stevens, executive director of the organization. Distancing protocols have made that all but impossible.

“That poses a real challenge, with people logging on public lands, but no access for the public,” Stevens said. “It’s a little bit galling. Across many sectors, there are tough decisions about how to keep business going versus what to do for public health, but this lays bare the priorities.”

Defenders of Wildlife, a national organization that works to protect endangered species like Oregon’s population of gray wolves, is usually doing field work at this time of year, with dozens of staff members taking surveys, hosting workshops or attending hearings from Alaska to the Rocky Mountains to the Southeast. The organization is still doing some work, said Shawn Cantrell, vice president of field operations, but it’s mostly limited to online meetings and phone calls.

“Late spring and summer is our very busy field season. That’s when we put out camera traps and hair snags and try to measure the occupancy of various imperiled species,” he said. “There is still a need for that work, and we’re not sure how well we’ll be able to do that in a social distancing way.”

Financial frustrations

But a bigger worry for environmental organizations is one familiar to many as coronavirus has put a squeeze on the economy: funding. Oregon Wild depends, in large part, on foundations, and the losses in the stock market will likely be felt in coming months. Defenders of Wildlife depends on individual donors and, so far at least, they’ve fared OK, but Cantrell cautioned that six weeks is not a long time to gauge the economic fallout of the shutdown.

Some organizations rely heavily on Earth Day events to raise money, said Bethany Thomas, founder of Earth Day Oregon. Last year, in her inaugural effort, Thomas helped match 84 businesses with nearly two dozen nonprofits to host events with a portion of the proceeds going to environmental groups. She was ready to expand her efforts this year, with more than 200 businesses — breweries, wineries and restaurants — on deck to host events for more than 50 nonprofits.

All of those events have been canceled. Instead, her organization has started an online campaign called “My planet, my pledge,” wherein people make a promise to take action on an environmental issue and display it publicly.

Thomas is trying to keep things in perspective. She knows the challenges most people are facing are far larger than hers, especially among the businesses that have had to pull out of Earth Day.

“It's been tricky and disappointing. Our plans have been thrown off for the month, but theirs are much worse,” she said. “It's so hard for the businesses, from the ones as big as Intel and Columbia, down to mom and pop shops. There are so many different stories.”

Willamette Riverkeeper sits at the intersection of both of those problems, as staff and volunteers have been kept away by stay-home orders and fundraising events have been canceled or postponed. King said the organization seemed to be on the verge of recruiting a dedicated group of volunteers for its monthly river cleanups before the pandemic, and she’s not sure how many will return once distancing orders are eased. Three of the organization’s biggest fundraisers, which usually raise about $100,000, were scheduled for the coming months.

But King is still encouraging her members to get out for individual river cleanups, properly distanced, of course.

“We are really trying to engage our membership to get them out there to do these kinds of things,” King said. “If you have your kids at home, make a science class out of it. You can have them identify a bird. If you find invasive weeds, you can still report them to us.”

If and when things return to something resembling normal, King said she hopes to be back on the banks of the Willamette. In the last cleanup in Eugene, volunteers collected nearly 200 cubic yards of trash, so the need isn’t going anywhere.

And there’s one aspect of her work that she wouldn’t dare cancel: the pizza party for Lila, the young girl who collected change from her classmates to donate to Willamette Riverkeeper.

Once it’s safe to do so, King plans to add ice cream to the menu.

-- Kale Williams; kwilliams@oregonian.com; 503-294-4048; @sfkale

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