An article in the outdoors section of Tuesday’s Williamsport Sun-Gazette details how festive releases of Mylar balloons pose deadly risks to birds.

A local birding expert shared how birds mistake the remnants of the balloons for food and eat them — and how the remnants of balloons can block digestive systems, leaving the birds to starve.

We continue to maintain that the best measures our communities and region can take to preserve the environment don’t involve eliminating thousands of jobs developing conventional sources of energy, pushing energy bills higher for families and businesses and leaving those families and businesses with less reliability on meeting their energy needs.

While we support balanced regulatory oversight that curtails practices we’ve learned pollute more heavily but still keeps job-creating industries free of unnecessary bureaucratic burdens, we even find that to be a secondary measure.

The best way to promote conservation and responsible stewardship is to be, as individuals, responsible stewards.

Families should consider how their own behaviors and choices impact the environment. Better still, they need to teach their children to reflect on their choices and to make responsible choices — by not littering, by not being wasteful, by being mindful of wildlife and habitat, by volunteering for litter pickup and other conservation-minded service and, yes, by foregoing balloon releases to celebrate occasions.

We understand that there are those who disagree — those who believe that a top-down, one-size-fits-all government mandates and authority and censure can improve the environment.

They believe the loss of jobs, the loss of opportunities and the financial pressures this approach places on working families are worth it.

We believe that America’s exceptionalism is built on a foundation of individualism and individual rights. We believe that 250 years of history demonstrate that innovation and action — at that individual level — will continue to produce steady improvement on environmental protection — environmental protection of which men and women of all ages are partners and not subjects.