[ti:As People Stay Home, Earth Turns Wilder and Cleaner] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.04]Wednesday marked the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. [00:04.96]American Gaylord Nelson launched the first Earth Day in 1970. [00:12.60]His aim was to urge local action and increase people's understanding of our planet and its environment. [00:23.00]The creation of Earth Day is widely considered the beginning of the modern environmental movement. [00:31.84]As climate activists marked the event this year, an unplanned experiment is changing the planet. [00:41.48]Many people continue to stay at home to stop the spread of the new coronavirus. [00:48.76]As a result, people are making less pollution, and the air has become cleaner. [00:57.20]Smog stopped covering New Delhi, one of the world's most polluted cities. [01:03.88]Nitrogen dioxide pollution in the northeastern United States has dropped 30 percent. [01:11.28]Air pollution levels in Rome have dropped 49 percent compared to a year ago. [01:18.88]Stars seem more visible at night. [01:22.92]People also report seeing wild animals in unusual places. [01:29.12]Coyotes have been observed walking in downtown Chicago and near San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. [01:38.44]A puma was seen in the streets of Santiago, Chile. [01:43.36]Goats entered a town in Wales and showed no interest in leaving. [01:50.36]When people stay home, the Earth becomes cleaner and wilder. [01:56.36]Stuart Pimm is a scientist at Duke University in the United States. [02:03.08]He says the stay-at-home orders worldwide are "giving us this quite extraordinary insight [02:10.40]into just how much of a mess we humans are making of our beautiful planet." [02:17.72]Pimm told The Associated Press that the situation is providing a chance to "see how much better it can be." [02:28.40]Scientists, stuck at home like the rest of us, [02:32.20]say they are interested in studying unexpected changes in plants, insects, weather, noise and light pollution. [02:42.92]Researchers have been observing sharp drops in traditional air pollutants, [02:48.72]such as nitrogen dioxide, smog and tiny particles. [02:53.92]These kinds of pollutants kill up to 7 million people a year worldwide, [03:00.52]says Dan Greenbaum, president of the Health Effects Institute. [03:06.32]Cleaner air has been most noticeable in India and China. [03:12.00]On April 3, people living in Jalandhar, a city in north India's Punjab, [03:18.76]woke up to a sight not seen for many years: [03:22.96]snow-covered Himalayan mountains more than 160 kilometers away. [03:30.36]Cleaner air means stronger lungs for asthmatics, especially children, said Mary Prunicki. [03:37.92]She is a doctor and director of air pollution and health research [03:42.60]at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California. [03:47.56]She noted early studies have linked coronavirus severity [03:52.32]to people with weak lungs and those living in more polluted areas. [03:59.08]In Australia, police shared a video of a kangaroo on social media. [04:05.20]It showed the animal jumping around a mostly empty neighborhood in downtown Adelaide. [04:12.92]Several wild jackals recently occupied a city park in Tel Aviv, Israel. [04:20.48]We are not being invaded, Duke's Stuart Pimm noted. [04:25.04]The wildlife has always been there, but many animals only come out when people are not around. [04:33.28]Human activity usually makes it difficult for sea turtles to leave their eggs on sandy coastlines. [04:41.24]Nesting turtles need to be undisturbed. [04:45.24]After they come out of their eggs, baby turtles might have problems finding their way to the water [04:52.04]because of bright lights, said David Godfrey. [04:56.32]He is executive director of the Sea Turtle Conservancy. [05:01.92]But with lights mostly off and people in their homes, the sea turtle nesting [05:07.96]seems much better this year -- from India to Costa Rica to Florida, Godfrey said. [05:15.24]"There's some silver lining for wildlife in what otherwise is a fairly catastrophic time for humans," he added. [05:24.72]I'm Ashley Thompson. 更多听力请访问51VOA.COM