When exactly is Earth Day?
It's today, April 22.
No, it's every day!
???
Why, when is Mothers' Day?
The Sunday after the first Tue...
No, it's every day. Go and ask your mom!
This is the conversation I once had at a place I was doing some wwoofing once. I had to laugh, because (unlike Earth Day) the exact day for Mothers' Day can differ depending on your culture. In Hungary it's the first Sunday in May, in Mexico always May 10, and in the UK sometime in March. So I tend to send my mom random greetings throughout the year, and sometimes it even falls on an actual mothers' day somewhere in the world. But Earth Day... Up until now I wasn't even sure about the date.
Thankfully, the current Earth Day Challenge by the 
So here in Mexico where I live, one would think the government goes out of its way to do anything to protect the trees. If you buy a piece of land and want to cut down some trees to build on it, you need to apply for permission for each single tree. Wow! You need to provide documentation why it's important for you to cut a tree, and answer all sorts of questions before being allowed to do so. Also, it is considered a crime to transport certain types of wood, including palm trees, or even palm leaves. This felony is punished with up to eight years of prison.
While this may seem all good and well for the environment, one doesn't need to venture too far mentally to realize how such a law can be counterproductive.
First of all, we're not only talking about old-growth virgin forests, only trees in general. If someone has planted them specifically for the purpose of timber, it will be cut down. Then it will be sold, as there is always someone wanting to buy it, because they want to use it in their construction. To keep using the same example, palm-thatched roofs called palapas are an integral part of Mexican coastal culture. Making and maintaining palapas is an important trade among local craftsmen, and the benefits of their cost-weight-esthetic relationship make them a popular choice. If it just weren't for that pesky transport issue.
As you might have guessed from the context, what makes this law so stupid is how easily it can be circumvented. You just transport the material at night, on a covered truck, taking windy little mountain roads instead of the main highway. So you'd say the law isn't worth much, but I think it's much worse than that! It's precisely because of laws like this, that people get used to breaking them. And once you've broken one law, you might as well cut down trees without permission, or dump your used batteries in the ocean.
The other thing that makes ordinary people want to disregard the law, is the other way to circumvent it: by giving a "mordida", or bribes. As we all know, money talks, compared to which bs laws take the pedestrian approach. So it's not surprising to see a big hotel raze their recently acquired 10 hectares to zero, while the small timer gets charged for cutting down some saplings where he wants to build a small house. As a result, you see people cutting a ring into the tree's bark, so they can claim that it just died on them, instead of cutting them down right away. This is human ingenuity at its worst, thanks to a well intended law.
So you need to change the law, one could argue, and make it more functional in protecting nature. Okay, but how? It takes years to make these legislative changes, and who says the new law is going to work as intended? I mean, this current law has also been written with the best in mind. And it's always easier to react to laws, finding a way around them, than it is to change them. Do we need laws anyway? Who says we are so irresponsible and destructive that we need someone to watch over us? Is that a premise we are willing to accept?
Looking around us, we can see lots of examples in support of this patronizing attitude. After all, people keep trashing our world left and right. Big money indulging in exploitative practices with complete disregard to life is only one side. The ignorant populace killing everything that moves is the other. So arguing for regulation would make perfect sense... Until you see the futility in it!
The general tendency I can see in the world is the view that "ordinary people" (whoever they are) are not fit to take care of their world. Instead they should surrender their decisions to professional organizations and/or the government. I couldn't imagine a worse way of looking at us and the world. This way, humans are excluded from nature, forcing people to live in their own waste, cutting all remaining lines with that which sustains us. On the other hand, we deprive nature from our interaction with it. Without going too deep into this issue, I just want to say that like it or not, we are top predators (thanks to exterminating our competition in most places), which comes with a responsibility.
So instead of trying to create "natural habitat" without humans, I believe people should be trained to take up this duty with everything it entails. Managing and protecting nature. And in my opinion this can be only done by active involvement, including hunting and cutting down trees. Only making sure you kill the right animals and cut the right trees. And that needs education.
Have you ever been told something along the lines of: "You are not from here, so you're not indigenous, and that means you can't know it." This kind of condescension towards foreigners always pushes a number of my buttons. Sure, I am not indigenous to your region or culture, but that doesn't mean that I can't know more about ecology than you. Also, I realize that lots of times others know more about something than me. In fact, indigenous people tend to have a great deal of knowledge about their environment that I would love to have. But that's not because they were born in their culture. They chose to acquire it, by listening to their elders, or even reading about it in books. Why not? So at least give me the chance of doing the same.
I believe every place has its own stories, and the people who are in a place will be ultimately confronted by them. For this reason, it's important to share them, and follow them, by everyone who is in that place. But people's behavior can also be the opposite, no matter which culture their great grandparents had. At this point it doesn't matter what ancestry one certain person has, all it comes down to is the way they act.
Coming back to the question of legislation, I would prefer to see practical education replace regulation. Say if someone cuts down the only tree on their land to make charcoal for sale, the surrounding community should approach the person doing it, explaining to them why this is not good. No laws, no sanctions, just social consequences. It would probably annoy the hell out of them, so ultimately they would stop, even though it is their land, their tree, etc. But with time they may realize that this is the way to go.
Applied to the large scale, an entire community could be turned around with the continuous education about ecological systems, showing people the numerous benefits each system in it has (from the largest tree to the smallest ants living in it). The final goal should be to establish a way of life where the average small-timer can live in nature, with nature, and off nature, by protecting it, improving its biodiversity, and reaping lots of benefits by doing so. I believe this approach to be way more effective in the short and long term, than passing pointless laws that create more damage than good.
To participate in this challenge you need to meet certain criteria. Here are mine:
@pablo.santiago and 
@mudhaeh to participate. I hope these two recent onboardees will get around to posting at some point!@naturalmedicine community by the time this challenge closes on Friday, April 25. Hold on, April 25 is a Sunday! Somebody make some corrections, please.