thehuffingtonpost--2019-08-14--Hatred For The Endangered Species Act Runs Deep At Trumps Interior Department

Hatred For The Endangered Species Act Runs Deep At Trump’s Interior Department

Environmentalists primarily use three laws, including the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as tools to “drive people off the land” and into cities where they can be “controlled,” he said. At the time, Pendley was president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a Colorado-based nonprofit law firm that focuses on “protecting property rights” and advocates for selling off millions of federal acres in the West.  “We’ve gone from protecting the warm and fuzzies to protecting the cold and slimies,” he said. “It was supposed to apply only to federal land. Today, it applies to private property ― coast to coast, border to border ― which leads us here in the West to say what? ‘Shoot, shovel and shut up’ if you encounter one of those critters on your property.”  “Shoot, shovel and shut up” ― also known as the “3-S treatment” ― is a strategy extreme property rights advocates have embraced for getting rid of unwanted, imperiled species on private land. Pendley has also written that the law underlying federal species protection is used “to kill or prevent anybody from making a living on federal land.”  Late last month, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt tapped Pendley to serve as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, an agency of the Interior Department that oversees 245 million acres of public land, or more than one-third of the federal estate. This week, the Trump administration finalized rules that significantly weaken the Endangered Species Act. Among other things, the changes will make it easier for government agencies to remove species from the protected list and limit their ability to account for the impacts of future climate change. The rollback comes on the heels of a United Nations report that found up to 1 million species around the globe are at risk of extinction due to human activities.  That the Interior Department took aim at the ESA comes as no surprise when one considers some of the people in high-ranking posts. Pendley is one of several agency officials who detest what is arguably America’s most important law for protecting imperiled plants and animals.  Susan Combs, a former Texas comptroller who was confirmed in June as Interior’s assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, once equated proposed ESA listings to “incoming Scud missiles” headed for her state’s oil and gas-rich economy. As a state lawmaker in the 1990s, she championed legislation prohibiting state wildlife officials from gathering endangered species data from private lands without permission, according to The Austin Chronicle. As Texas comptroller, she fought against the federal government’s proposal to list the dune sagebrush lizard ― an effort that primarily benefited fossil fuel interests. And in 2015, Combs led three groups in a failed effort to petition to have federal protections removed for the golden-cheeked warbler, an endangered songbird native to central Texas.  Karen Budd-Falen, Interior’s deputy solicitor for fish, wildlife and parks, has called the ESA “a sword to tear down the American economy, drive up food, energy and housing costs and wear down and take out rural communities and counties.” As a private lawyer, she was involved in several ESA-related legal disputes, including representing parties accused of violating the law.  Kathy Benedetto, a top adviser at Interior, said in 1995 that the ESA “states that plants, animals and bugs are more important than human beings and that’s morally bankrupt,” according to a daily newsletter from the Alliance for America, a property rights group that was “dedicated to bringing human concerns into environmental decision-making.”  Then there’s Interior chief Bernhardt, a former fossil fuel lobbyist and lawyer who has been a key figure in the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda. In 2008, while working as the department’s top lawyer during the Bush administration, Bernhardt issued a legal memo that concluded it’s impossible to prove planet-warming greenhouse gases are impacting imperiled species and instructed federal agencies not to consider climate change when making listing decisions. As an industry lawyer, he sued the federal government over its implementation of the act. And as an official in the Trump administration, he intervened to block a scientific report by the Fish and Wildlife Service about the threat certain pesticides pose to more than 1,000 endangered species, as an investigation by The New York Times uncovered earlier this year.  The black-footed ferret was brought back from the brink of extinction by a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service captive breeding program. The species has been reintroduced in the wild, but is still listed under the Endangered Species Act.  What’s clear, however, is that there are several people walking the halls of Interior’s headquarters in Washington who don’t share that sentiment and want to see sweeping revisions to the ESA. And that’s exactly what environmental groups say the American public is getting with the new rules, which alter how federal agencies implement portions of the law.  “You’ll hear from the administration that a lot of these changes are just kind of cleaning up and technical in nature,” Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of the conservation nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife and a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President Bill Clinton, told reporters Monday. “But this package of regulations in no way will improve species conservation, they’ll do quite the opposite. They’ll seriously undermine the Endangered Species Act’s effectiveness in significant and important ways.”


naturalnews--2019-02-07--Be sure to buy biodegradable sunscreen to protect coral reefs

(Natural News) The sun is out and you’re raring to wear that pair of shades that has been languishing in your cabinet drawer for months. It’s also about time to resurrect that pair of slippers, your swim gear, picnic mat, barbecue grill, and other summer must-haves. Of course, sunscreen is part of these summer staples.  But wait. Before you slather on a generous amount on your body, consider a few questions.  Is that sunscreen environment-friendly? Will it be safe for marine life growing underneath the beautiful beach where you plan to spend many happy hours with friends and family?  Recent studies have found a link between the active ingredients that protect the skin from harmful ultraviolet rays to coral bleaching. Coral bleaching is the result of stress from changes in temperature, light and nutrients in the environment. Stressed corals release algae in their tissues, which make them turn totally white. Stressed corals are in greater danger of dying than their healthier counterparts.  This has led to a global outcry for more reef-friendly sunscreens. Craig Downs, executive director of the Haereticus Environmental Laboratory, which examined the effects of sunscreen on coral reefs, made a disturbing statement. He says sunscreen chemicals that get into the water while people are swimming enter sewage systems when washed off in the shower. Supporting Downs’ alarming statement is his team’s 2015 study showing how oxybenzone, a chemical common in sunscreens, harms algae that live in corals. Oxybenzone also stunts coral growth. Meanwhile, a 2008 European study stated that sunscreen led to a viral infection in corals, which in turn, promoted bleaching. The study added that around 14,000 tons of sunscreen are deposited into the world’s oceans yearly.  Get CLEAN FOOD and help support our mission to keep you informed: The Health Ranger Store lab verifies everything we sell with accredited testing for heavy metals, microbiology and food safety. Certified organic facility, ISO-accredited on-site laboratory, no GMOs or synthetic ingredients. The world's #1 source of lab-verified clean foods and superfoods for nutritional healing. 600+ products available. Explore now.  These figures were enough to make lawmakers in Hawaii lobby for a law banning sunscreens with oxybenzone. But they failed. Consumer Healthcare Products Association, which represents makers of over-the-counter medicine, and the Personal Care Products Council, made up of cosmetics and personal care industry representatives, protested, citing the role sunscreens play in cancer prevention.  But this did not faze concerned groups and individuals.  Mark Parrish, co-owner of Big Blue Unlimited, a tour operation that holds excursions in the Turks and Caicos Islands where coral reefs attract tourists, ruled that only “100 percent biodegradable sunscreen” should be used in their areas. Parrish published this policy on his company’s website to make sure visitors were forewarned. The travel industry likewise launched a campaign educating travelers on coral reef-friendly sunscreen. (Related: The sunscreen myth: How sunscreen products actually promote cancer.)  Aqua-Aston Hospitality, which manages over 40 resorts in Hawaii, distributes backgrounders on oxybenzone and coral bleaching as guests come in. The staff hand out samples of chemical-free sunscreen and offers free sunscreen dispensers with biodegradable lotion. The campaign is now enforced in all of the company’s resorts.  Outrigger Resorts, also in Hawaii, provides free samples of reef-safe sunscreen to guests.  In Mexico, snorkeling favorites Xel-Há and Chankanaab Beach Adventure Park have banned non-biodegradable sunscreen. At Xel-Há, visitors with unapproved sunscreen can swap them for safe ones. They get their own sunscreens back upon leaving.  At the seven Solmar Hotels & Resorts, guests may buy biodegradable sunblock on-site and are told in advance that it’s the only kind allowed in area preserves like Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park.  Using earth-friendly sunscreen may not totally solve the coral bleaching problem. But sunscreen use is the only one travelers and tourists have control over. Travelers can help save coral reefs even more by wearing sun protection gear like wide-brim hats, parasols and protective clothing which reduce or eliminate the need for sunscreens.


conservativehome--2019-09-17--Kirsty Finlayson Conservation should be a conservative issue

Kirsty Finlayson: Conservation should be a conservative issue

Kirsty Finlayson is Director of Communications for the British Conservation Alliance, which launches today. She is a solicitor and has previously stood as a Conservative candidate in the 2017 General Election and the 2019 European Election.  Millennials like me routinely consider the environment our number one concern. Yet this issue has been hijacked by the Left for far too long. What is more conservative than conserving the air that we breathe, the water that we drink and the animals that we share our planet with? Our traditional values include the principle to defend for the next generation. Conservative members tend to agree, on the whole, that nationalisation of industries, subsidy-regimes and large-scale government intervention will not solve the environmental crises that we face. Encouragement and empowerment of individuals and business is often key to harnessing real change for the long-term.  We must do more to ensure that this message comes across to a new generation of voters who are massively concerned with the future of the planet’s natural resources and wildlife. That is why I am excited to have joined the British Conservation Alliance, a new non-profit organisation for millennials to engage on the principles of pro-market environmentalism and “conservative conservation”. Our shared beliefs stem from the revolutionary idea that economic and environmental successes are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to harness both the power of the free market and the beauty of our environment to benefit everyone in society. Whereas environmental activism has historically shunned anyone right-of-centre, the British Conservation Alliance is acting to recapture market-based solutions to encourage people live more green-conscious lives.  The Conservative Party has already achieved so much to protect the environment, but these actions have all too often been drowned out by the lefties. It has been a Tory Government who introduced a £140 million fund for developing countries to cope with global warming, ended the exemption for small shops from England’s five-pence plastic bag charge and explored plastic-free aisles in supermarkets.  Looking to the future, it is a Tory Government who will lead global innovation in sustainable plastics, helping support our best entrepreneurs, scientists and businesses to develop the solutions and industries of tomorrow, whilst improving our environment at the same time. It is a Tory Government who will encourage our financial sector to invest more in sustainable projects to establish London as the pre-eminent international centre for green finance, introduce an expectation for listed companies to disclose how climate change impacts their work and launch the Green Finance Institute with the City of London to foster greater cooperation between the public and private sector. And it is a Tory Government that is establishing a £5 million Green Home Finance Fund to help pilot products like green mortgages (using green finance for home energy efficiency) and energy efficiency retrofit (to make homes more environmentally sustainable).  But we must ensure a bottom-up approach bringing individuals and businesses along the journey. I recall a trip to a convenience store during my East Ham General Election campaign, where one business owner was deeply concerned about being forced to accept returned plastic bottles at the till and store them for collection, proving a logistical and health and safety nightmare for his small corner shop.  Our Prime Minister’s new government must:  And what about that tiresome argument that delivering Brexit will lead to deregulation? Not only can we ensure that standards on clean air, water and soil be maintained post-Brexit, but after Brexit, with autonomy over our own laws, we can be as strict as we need about over-fishing of certain species, re-planting woodland during infrastructure projects or incentives for businesses using clean energy.  It is time for those who believe in market and conservative principles to take charge of the debate, emphasise our commitment to the environment and to show that our values are fully capable of being climate-compatible. We are all the stewards of this beautiful planet of ours and have a moral imperative to keep it clean, thriving and in harmony with human development. Let’s break the left-wing monopoly on environmental issues, now.


newsweek--2019-01-21--Great Plains Bison Were Brought Back From the Brink of ExtinctionA Remarkable Century-long Conserv

Great Plains Bison Were Brought Back From the Brink of Extinction—A Remarkable, Century-long Conservation Success Story

Driving north of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, an extraordinary landscape comes into view. Trees disappear and an immense landscape of grass emerges, undulating in the wind like a great, green ocean.  This is the Flint Hills. For over a century it has been cattle country, a place where cows grow fat on nutritious grasses. More recently, a piece of this landscape was transformed in 1992 when the nonprofit Nature Conservancy bought the Barnard Ranch. It created a nature reserve there, the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, which now covers almost 40,000 acres.  Read more: The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone led to an unexpected ecological response  A central element of the group’s conservation strategy was reintroducing the American bison (Bison bison), which had been eradicated from the land in the mid-1800s. Releasing the first bison in 1993 was a step toward restoring part of an ecosystem that once stretched from Texas to Minnesota.  Today some 500,000 bison have been restored in over 6,000 locations, including public lands, private ranches and Native American lands. As they return, researchers like me are gaining insights into their substantial ecological and conservation value.  It was not always certain that bison could rebound. Once numbering in the tens of millions, they dominated the Great Plains landscape until the late 1800s, anchoring a remarkable ecosystem that contained perhaps the greatest concentration of mammals on Earth. That abundance was wiped out as settlers and the U.S. government engaged in a brutally effective campaign to eradicate the ecosystem and the native cultures that relied on it.  Bison were shot by the millions, sometimes for “sport,” sometimes for profit, and ultimately to deprive Native Americans of vital resources. By 1890, fewer than 1,000 bison were left, and the outlook for them was bleak. Two small wild populations remained, in Yellowstone National Park and northern Alberta, Canada; and a few individuals survived in zoos and on private ranches.  Remarkably, a movement developed to save the bison and ultimately became a conservation success story. Some former bison hunters, including prominent figures like William 'Buffalo Bill' Cody and future President Theodore Roosevelt, gathered the few surviving animals, promoted captive breeding and eventually reintroduced them to the natural landscape.  With the establishment of additional populations on public and private lands across the Great Plains, the species was saved from immediate extinction. By 1920 it numbered about 12,000.  Bison remained out of sight and out of mind for most Americans over the next half-century, but in the 1960s diverse groups began to consider the species’ place on the landscape. Native Americans wanted bison back on their ancestral lands. Conservationists wanted to restore parts of the Plains ecosystems. And ranchers started to view bison as an alternative to cattle production.  More ranches began raising bison, and Native American tribes started their own herds. Federal, state, tribal and private organizations established new conservation areas focusing in part on bison restoration, a process that continues today in locations such as the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas and the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana.  By the early 2000s, the total North American population had expanded to 500,000, with about 90 percent being raised as livestock—but often in relatively natural conditions—and the rest in public parks and preserves. For scientists, this process has been an opportunity to learn how bison interact with their habitat.  Bison feed almost exclusively on grasses, which, because they grow rapidly, tend to out-compete other plants. Bison’s selective grazing behavior produces higher biodiversity because it helps plants that normally are dominated by grasses to coexist.  Because they tend to graze intensively on recently burned zones and leave other areas relatively untouched, bison create a diverse mosaic of habitats. They also like to move, spreading their impacts over large areas. The variety they produce is key to the survival of imperiled species such as the greater prairie chicken (Tympanuchus cupido) that prefer to use different patches for different behaviors, such as mating and nesting.  Bison impacts don’t stop there. They often kill woody vegetation by rubbing their bodies and horns on it. And by digesting vegetation and excreting their waste across large areas, they spread nutrients over the landscape. This can produce higher-quality vegetation that benefits other animals.  Studies, including my own research, have shown that bison-induced changes in vegetation composition and quality grazing can increase the abundance and diversity of birds and insects in tallgrass prairies. Bison also affect their environment by wallowing—rolling on the ground repeatedly to avoid biting insects and shed loose fur. This creates long-lasting depressions that further enhance plant and insect diversity, because they are good habitats for plant and animal species that are not found in open areas of the prairie. In contrast, cattle do not wallow, so they do not provide these benefits.  It is hard to determine the ecological role that bison played before North America was settled by Europeans, but available evidence suggests they may have been the most impactful animal on the Plains←potentially a keystone species whose presence played a unique and crucial role in the ecology of prairies.  The return of the bison has generated a new industry on the Plains. The National Bison Association promotes these animals as long-lived, hardy and high-quality livestock. The group hopes to double bison numbers through its Bison 1 Million commitment, a program designed to increase interest in bison ranching and consumption.  Advocates cite health, ecological and ethical arguments in support of bison ranching. Bison meat is lean and has a high protein content. Many bison ranchers are committed to ethical and sustainable ranching practices, which sometimes are lacking in modern industrial livestock farming.  “I have a love of nature and want to protect it. It was one of my family’s goals to restore the grasslands. Bison helped us regenerate the land,” Mimi Hillenbrand, owner and operator of the 777 Bison Ranch near Rapid City, South Dakota told me. She adds: “I love the animal. We are lucky that we brought them back. I learn every day from them.”  Will bison live on in relatively small, isolated herds as they do now, or something greater? The American Prairie Reserve, a Montana-based nonprofit, has a big and controversial idea: creating an ecologically functioning three million acre preserve of private, public and tribal lands in northeast Montana, with a herd of over 10,000 bison—the largest single population in the world. Although this would be small compared to the millions that once existed, it still would be something to see.  Bison were saved through the combined efforts of conservationists, scientists, ranchers and ultimately the general public. As their comeback continues, I believe that they can teach us how to be better stewards of the land and provide a future for the Plains where ecosystems and human cultures thrive.  This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.


theguardianuk--2019-05-05--Cornish hedges under threat from developers say conservationists

Cornish hedges under threat from developers, say conservationists

The Cornish hedge – teeming with flora and fauna and one of the most beloved features of the landscape in the far south-west of Britain – is under threat from developers, conservationists are warning.  Some Cornish hedges are believed to be more than 4,000 years old, making them among the oldest human-built structures in Britain.  Unfortunately, because the Cornish hedge has such a distinctive structure – consisting typically of earth and stone with trees or bushes growing out of the top – it does not necessarily receive the same protection in law afforded to conventional hedgerows across England and Wales.  The Cornwall Wildlife Trust has raised concern that precious hedges are being lost when housing estates or industrial sites are built and Cornwall council is asking the UK government to help it save the hedges.  Cheryl Marriott, head of conservation at the trust, said many miles of Cornish hedges had already vanished. “They are a vital element of our landscape,” she said. “They are being lost primarily to developments such as big housing or industrial estates.”  There are about 30,000 miles of hedges in Cornwall. In the east of the county they are more likely to have shrubs on the top; in the windswept, weather-battered far west, they may consist only of earth and hefty stones.  But all types of Cornish hedge are rich in plant and animal life. At this time of year many, especially in the east and south, are a riot of colour. They are important wildlife corridors for hedgehogs, adders, harvest mice and bats. The more austere-looking ones in the far west are an important habitat for invertebrates and reptiles who live in the nooks and crannies.  Marriott said the trust had a map of all the hedges. “Every 10 years we look at how many have been lost,” she said. Between 1995 and 2005, almost 100 miles of hedge disappeared.  The trust is in the process of working out what happened between 2005 and 2015. “We’re still losing them,” said Marriott. “It’s not like planting a normal new hedgerow, which can be fairly cheap. It costs about £100 a metre to build a Cornish hedge. Not many people are putting them in.”  It is not all doom and gloom. The problem is being recognised and projects are under way to try to save the current network and restore hedges that have gone.  To mark the diamond jubilee this year of Cornwall being an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB), under a scheme called Kerdroya, master hedgers are training up a network of “hedge stewards”. They aim to restore and rebuild 11 hedges that will form a Cornwall-wide trail.  Cornwall council explains clearly on its website the regulations around Cornish hedges and why some may not have the protection many feel they merit.  Under the Hedgerows Regulations 1997, it is against the law to remove most countryside hedges in England and Wales without the permission of the relevant local council.  But the regulations relate to a “hedgerow” – a row of trees or shrubs. The website says: “Cornish hedges in their great variety do not always meet this definition. The hedge or field boundary is generally a bank constructed with or without stone. On top of this there may be a hedgerow.  “The regulations only apply where there is a hedgerow, although a recent appeal case in Cornwall suggests that they do apply if the hedge is capable of having a hedgerow. The situation is not clear and landowners are advised to check with the planning service if they are considering removing a hedge.”  So seriously does the council take the plight of the Cornish hedge, it appears in its New Frontiers plan, created to address the challenges that would face the county in a post-Brexit world. The council says it would like the freedom to “develop and utilise an alternative system for the protection of Cornish hedges”.  The council said: “Cornish hedges are an important part of the landscape and history as well as home to a wide variety of plants and animals. The council is committed to protecting them as part of our unique and distinctive environment and heritage. The circumstances under which they are allowed to be removed are usually exceptional and we provide advice and guidance on their conservation and management.”


theguardianuk--2019-11-13--‘Insect apocalypse’ poses risk to all life on Earth, conservationists warn

The “unnoticed insect apocalypse” should set alarm bells ringing, according to conservationists, who said that without a halt there will be profound consequences for humans and all life on Earth.  A new report suggested half of all insects may have been lost since 1970 as a result of the destruction of nature and heavy use of pesticides. The report said 40% of the 1million known species of insect are facing extinction.  The analysis, written by one of the UK’s leading ecologists, has a particular focus on the UK, whose insects are the most studied in the world. It said 23 bee and wasp species have gone extinct in the last century, while the number of pesticide applications has approximately doubled in the last 25 years.  UK butterflies that specialise in particular habitats have fallen 77% since the mid-1970s and generalists have declined 46%, the report said. There are also knock-on effects on other animals, such as the spotted flycatcher which only eats flying insects. Its populations have dropped by 93% since 1967.  But conservationists said that insect populations can be rescued, by introducing firm targets to cut pesticide use and making urban parks and gardens more wildlife friendly. Scientists said insects are essential for all ecosystems, as pollinators, food for other creatures, and recyclers of nutrients.  “We can’t be sure, but in terms of numbers, we may have lost 50% or more of our insects since 1970 – it could be much more,” said Prof Dave Goulson, at the University of Sussex, UK, who wrote the report for the Wildlife Trusts. “We just don’t know, which is scary. If we don’t stop the decline of our insects there will be profound consequences for all life on earth [and] for human wellbeing.”  Studies of insect populations over decades are scarce, he said: “But the overwhelming weight of evidence that exists suggests the rapid decline is a real phenomenon. It really worries me to hear people say we need more long-term studies to be sure. That would be great, but we can’t wait another 25 years before we do anything because it will be too late.”  Gary Mantle, chief executive of Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, said: “This unnoticed apocalypse should set alarms ringing. We have put at risk some of the fundamental building blocks of life. But insects and other invertebrates can recover quickly if we stop killing them and restore the habitats they require to thrive. We all need to take action now in our gardens, parks, farms, and places of work.”  The planet is at the start of a sixth mass extinction in its history, with huge losses already reported in larger animals that are easier to study. But insects are by far the most varied and abundant animals, outweighing humanity by 17 times.  Insect population collapses have been reported in Germany and Puerto Rico, and the first global scientific review, published in February, said widespread declines threaten a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”.  Insects can be helped to recover by “rewilding” urban gardens and parks, Goulson said. “There is potential for a huge network of insect-friendly habitats right across the country. Already a lot of people are buying into the idea that they can make their gardens more wildlife friendly by letting go of control a bit. There are also quite a lot of councils going pesticide free.”  But he said: “The bigger challenge is farming – 70% of Britain is farmland. No matter how many gardens we make wildlife friendly, if 70% of the countryside remains largely hostile to life, then we are not going to turn around insect decline.”  The report called for the introduction of binding targets for pesticide reduction in farming and for support for farmers to reach them. This could be funded by a tax on the chemicals – Sweden has had such a levy since 1984, and France, Italy and Denmark now also have charges.  Virtually all farms could significantly cut their pesticide use while still producing as much food, according to a 2017 study. The research also showed that chemical treatments could be cut without affecting farm profits on three-quarters of farms.  Matt Shardlow, chief executive of the charity Buglife, said: “The very latest research shows that quality habitats [in the UK] are so isolated that most invertebrate species are failing to move north to keep track with the climate envelope in which they can survive. Restoring networks of habitats for insects is now a number one priority.”  Goulson said the UK’s departure from the European Union means large-scale change is possible: “Whatever people think of Brexit, there is this potential opportunity to completely revise our farming system.” He said giving funds for boosting nature and other public goods, rather than simply owning land, was a really exciting possibility.


theindependent--2019-03-19--A crocodile terrorising a community and locals hungry for revenge how a spate of attacks sparked a

A crocodile terrorising a community and locals hungry for revenge: how a spate of attacks sparked a conservation debate

On the November day when Cornelio Bonite disappeared, a crocodile was spotted in the water with a human arm clasped in its jaws.  “It was like he was showing off,” says Efren Portades, 67, a watchman in the town of Balabac, a marshy island community in the Philippines near the sea border with Malaysia, who led the search for Bonite, a 33-year-old fisherman.  The month before, another crocodile – or the same one, for all anyone knows – had grabbed 16-year-old Parsi Diaz by the thigh after she jumped into the bay for a swim. She escaped. The year before that, a 12-year-old girl had been attacked while crossing a river. A few months later, that girl’s uncle was ripped in two. And more dogs and goats than anyone could count had been snatched from Balabac’s shores.  Some people were ready for revenge. “I wanted to blow the crocodile up,” says Portades, who intended to use the dynamite that some villagers use to bring up fish to kill the crocodile. “They can arrest me if they want, I will answer to it. I love the people here.”  Saltwater crocodiles once roamed the Philippines, but a century of habitat depletion, dynamite fishing and hunting has left them in just a scattering of places. They are now a protected species. But their numbers are bouncing back – even as the human settlements near them keep growing. That means more encounters between people and crocodiles, and more that end badly.  In Balabac, crocodiles have become a fact of life. Every year since 2015, there has been a fatal attack in the town, forcing authorities to capture another “problem crocodile”, says Jovic Fabello of the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development, a government agency in Palawan province, which includes Balabac. Just last month, a 12-year-old boy in Balabac was attacked but survived.  Making matters worse, villagers in Balabac, and elsewhere, have been poaching mangrove bark, which can be sold illegally to offshore buyers and used to make leather dye. That disrupts crocodiles’ habitats, driving the predators closer to towns and villages.  After Bonite’s body was found half-eaten on a riverbank, Jonathan Montalba, Balabac’s wildlife protection officer, had to remind Portades and other angry villagers that killing a crocodile would have legal consequences. Worried about the crocodile’s well-being, he sent urgent messages to the Palawan Wildlife Rescue and Conservation Centre. Salvador Guion, the head of the crocodile rescue team, assembled five veteran wranglers and left for Balabac the same day. Their mission? To capture the crocodile.  Nine hours from the nearest airport over half-paved roads and choppy seas, Balabac, a town of about three dozen islands and 40,000 people, still has the natural beauty that was once found across Palawan. Guion says that when he arrived in the town, he thought, “If I were a crocodile, this is where I would want to live.”  Its mangrove forests are thick and streaked with winding estuaries, where fresh water mixes with salt. There are muddy embankments for basking in the sun. Chickens, dogs and goats roam the river banks, and there are plenty of fish to eat.  Apprehending a crocodile was not a task Guion relished. Conservationists would rather leave them in the wild. Part of Guion’s job is teaching people to live alongside the creatures and see them as an essential part of the ecology, not a threat. In his view, it doesn’t help that buwaya, the Tagalog word for crocodile, is used to describe corrupt politicians and unscrupulous businessmen. Guion considers that a slander against crocodiles.  “They’re being dragged down by politicians, and they have no idea,” he says. “Crocodiles aren’t greedy. They only eat once or twice a week, and even then, just 3 per cent of their body weight at each feeding.”  Guion doesn’t believe the crocodile in Balabac hunted Bonite. He thinks it may have been lying in the mud near his boat and been startled by his movements. “Crocodiles are afraid of people, too,” he says.  Understandably, people whose neighbour have been eaten are less likely to take the long view, and retaliatory attacks on crocodiles are not unheard of. A gruesome example occurred last year in Indonesia, which has more crocodile attacks than any other country. A mob killed 292 of the animals at a breeding sanctuary, in revenge for an attack on a villager.  On the morning after their arrival in Balabac, Guion and his team began setting cable snares, strung with slices of goat steak. They named their quarry Singko, the Spanish-Filipino word for the number five, after Barangay 5, the neighbourhood where Bonite and Parsi were attacked.  Barangay 5, tellingly, is in the town centre – not the mangrove forests where crocodiles once tended to stay.  Singko was a well-known resident. He had been attracted by the runoff from a pigsty, and he lived on a diet of wandering dogs and chickens. He was accustomed to people; as Guion was setting the traps, Singko loomed in the water 30 feet away. The next morning, the snares were empty.  Crocodile hunts can go on for weeks, but living near people had made Singko bold, and that undid him in just two days.  In broad daylight, as noisy onlookers watched Guion mend a broken snare, Singko leapt from the water and snapped up the goat steak dangling over the surface. As he dragged the bait underwater, the snare tightened around his jaw, snapping the poles and tearing the trap apart. The crocodile hunters tugged at the trap’s rope and heaved him onto land.  With the help of dozens of townspeople and a pulley, Guion’s team lifted Singko – 15.7 feet long, 75 stone and estimated to be 50 years old – onto a flatbed truck to be driven to Puerto Princesa, the capital of Palawan province, where he will live out his life in a swampy pen.  Not everyone in Balabac was happy about the capture. To the Molbog, a Muslim tribe indigenous to the area, crocodiles are sacred, the embodiment of their ancestors. The Molbog word for crocodile, opo, is the same one they use for their grandparents.  “Crocodiles must be respected,” says Dianauya Diaz, 67, a Molbog elder. “They can try to catch them, but they will not disappear,” Diaz added. “By taking Singko, they planted the seeds of vengeance in his children and grandchildren.”  Conservationists have found that such cultural veneration of crocodiles, also practised by other indigenous groups in the Philippines, encourages peaceful coexistence.  About two weeks after Singko’s capture, a mesmerised crowd stood on the Barangay 5 pier at dawn. Another crocodile had moved into Singko’s territory. It rose to the surface and dipped back under, its scales cascading like ripples into the water.  “Our crocodiles are kind,” says Segundo Rapales, 75, as he gazed into the water. “Just don’t disturb them.”  We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.  At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.


theindependent--2019-03-22--Worldaposs fastest shark now facing extinction conservation experts warn

World's fastest shark now facing extinction, conservation experts warn

The world’s fastest shark is hurtling towards extinction following years of hunting for its prized meat and fins.  Experts have announced that shortfin makos, along with dozens more species of sharks and rays, are now officially at high risk of being wiped out for good.  Overfishing of these charismatic species, which take a long time to reproduce, by both commercial and recreational anglers has led to many global populations collapsing.  The shortfin mako, which can swim at speeds exceeding 40mph, is not currently subject to any international fishing restrictions despite populations falling by up to 60 per cent in some regions.  Its dramatic decline, along with that of its cousin the longfin mako, was reflected in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s latest assessment of shark species’ status.  Both species were downgraded from “vulnerable” to “endangered” – the same category as other famously threatened species like blue whales and Asian elephants.  “Our results are alarming and yet not surprising, as we find the sharks that are especially slow-growing, sought-after and unprotected from overfishing tend to be the most threatened,” said Professor Nicholas Dulvy, co-chair of the IUCN’s Shark Specialist Group.  Earlier this year, a study found a shortfin mako fin for sale alongside other threatened species in an Asian food retailer in the UK.  Conservation groups say there is still hope for the mako and other persecuted sharks if governments implement strict caps on fishing limits.  The success of such measures was reflected in the updated “red list” assessment for sharks and rays in Australia, which was heralded as a world leader in conservation of these animals.  More than half of the species found in Australian waters were deemed to be in no danger, with just a handful of deep-water species still thought to be at risk.  This is thought to be a direct result of authorities there implementing strict fishing quotas.  “The new information paints a stark warning – we find ourselves on the precipice of losing these unique species forever,” said Lee Crockett, director of the Shark Conservation Fund (SCF).  “The good news is that, with strategic support from SCF, we have the chance to win real protection this year with the right action by governments and fishery management bodies.”  A record number of sharks and rays will be proposed for listing at the next meeting of the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora in May.  At the same time, the EU is facing increasing pressure to announce catch quotas for mako sharks in its waters.


theindependent--2019-07-30--Sand dunes home to rare British toads and lizards get 4m conservation boost

Sand dunes home to rare British toads and lizards get £4m conservation boost

A scheme to reverse declines in wildlife-rich dune habitats by getting the sands shifting again has been given a £4m funding boost.  Sand dunes are home to rare plants and animals, with 70 species listed as conservation priorities including the natterjack toad, sand lizard, fen orchid, purple milkvetch and dune gentian.  The “dynamic dunescapes” project, backed by funding from the National Lottery, marks a move away from a decades-old approach to managing sand dunes, which has seen them kept where they are with fencing and vegetation.  These important habitats have declined by a third since 1900 in the UK – and in Wales the situation is particularly acute with dune landscapes down by almost two-thirds. Conservationists say dunes are naturally mobile and need to be moving to be effective habitats.  But previous management with fencing restricted public access and allowed invasive species of plants to become established, which prevented the dunes from moving.  This has turned landscapes which form a backdrop to many British beaches into sterile grassy hillocks which do not provide the habitat rare species need.  Using the funding, government conservation agency Natural England has teamed up with the National Trust, Plantlife, The Wildlife Trusts and Natural Resources Wales to create more dynamic sand dune landscapes.  The project will conserve almost 7,000 hectares (17,300 acres) of sand dunes – some 35 per cent of the total for England and Wales – and improve access for the public.  Conservation measures will include natural rabbit grazing, creating dune slacks or depressions that can be flooded, and removing invasive species.  The four-year scheme will also involve members of the public in monitoring wildlife and how the dunes are changing and train individuals and organisations in managing and researching the habitat.  Drew Bennellick, at the National Lottery Heritage Fund, said: “In recent decades the approach has been to keep dunes where they are by using fencing and vegetation.  “We now know that this is bad news for some of the rare species that make their homes among our dunes and they need to be able to naturally move – to be dynamic dunescapes.  “It’s not easy to get the balance right – we need dunes to move but we don’t want them to end up in people’s gardens or taking over the beach-side car park.  “Thanks to this National Lottery funding and the expertise of the partnership organisations, this project can begin to find ways of addressing these pressing issues.”  Nicola Hutchinson, from wildlife charity Plantlife, said: “This project will radically revitalise our ailing dunes and the wealth of wildflowers they harbour.  “Re-injecting real dynamism into dunes will revitalise wild plants which may appear rooted to the spot but are always on the move and benefit from shifting sands.”  The project will concentrate on improving the condition of nine dune landscapes at: Anglesey and Gwynedd; Braunton Burrows, North Devon Coast: Carmarthenshire; Cumbrian Coast; Lincolnshire Sand Hills; North Cornwall Coast; Sefton Coast; Studland Dunes, Dorset; Swansea, Neath, Port Talbot.


bbc--2019-01-16--Malaysia revises victim-shaming school text book

Malaysia revises 'victim-shaming' school text book

Malaysia's Education Ministry has said it shouldn't have published an infographic in a school textbook that said girls must protect their modesty or risk being shamed and ostracised.  The textbook, aimed at nine-year-olds, was distributed to all national primary schools in Malaysia.  A picture of the graphic was shared on social media by people who said it was encouraging victim-blaming.  Critics said it showed why better sex education was needed in schools.  The graphic tells the story of a character named Amira who protects the "modesty of her genitals" by dressing modestly, changing clothes behind closed doors and avoiding quiet places.  It then lists what would happen should Amira not follow those three steps, saying she would face shame and emotional distress, be ostracised by friends and bring shame onto her family.  Women's Aid Organisation advocacy manager Yu Ren Chung said that the graphic sexualised nine-year-olds, and placed the burden on them to avoid sexual assault.  "The infographic ignores the fact that perpetrators are the ones responsible for sexual assault," he told the BBC.  Deputy education minister Teo Nie Ching told the BBC by text message that the fact that the graphic was published showed a failure in the ministry's quality control, adding that "the general understanding on sex education is still low".  "We lacked the sensitivity needed to avoid such a mistake," she said.  The textbox hasn't been recalled but the ministry has sent out a sticker to cover up the graphic.  Ms Teo said that the ministry would consider changing the way it produces textbooks, and get experts to check the material before it is sent for printing. Currently, the writers of textbooks are teachers or lecturers who are typically "experts in the field".  Parent Action Group for Education chairman Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim told the BBC the graphic shone a light at the bigger issue of a lack of sex education in the Malaysian syllabus.  "I've always said that the reason we haven't been able to pinpoint how we should go about [sex education] is because we can't agree on a definition. One definition, which is rather extremist, is that sex education means sexual intercourse, that's all it means.  "What I advocate, what child psychologists agree on, in its milder form is what is a good touch and a bad touch.  "Until we can agree on what needs to be taught in schools, I think there will always be this disarray with the learning instruction being offered to students," she told the BBC.  The Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development said last week it was looking at possibly introducing some form of sexual education into schools.


bbc--2019-01-22--Im mixed-race is Cambridge University right for me

'I'm mixed-race, is Cambridge University right for me?'

Anoushka Mutanda Dougherty has been offered a place at Cambridge University, but she's mixed-race and from a state school - and only 3% of students who started at Cambridge in 2017 were black, or mixed-race with black heritage. So is it the best place for her? At this point, she's not sure.  Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world. Cambridge is the fourth-oldest surviving university in the world. Cambridge has produced, so far, 90 Nobel prize winners - and Cambridge, this educational powerhouse, just might not be where I want to go. At least, that's how I feel right now, a week after finding out that I got a place.  It was my parents who first encouraged me to try for Cambridge. They see it as a passport to the best jobs and opportunities. But I worry about what life would be like in a university which still admits quite a high proportion of pupils from private schools, and where I would be one of only a handful in my year from a mixed white/Black African family - in 2017 there were just 14. There's no escaping the fact that Cambridge is a majority white and majority posh (!) institution.  My mum, Anjula, is Ugandan and fled from Idi Amin's tyrannical regime in the 1970s. The story of people like her with a mixed Indian and Ugandan background is largely overlooked from accounts of racial tension in Uganda, and there's little understanding of the struggles she and others faced once they arrived in the UK. The experience of minority communities has helped shape my interest in unwritten histories (you try explaining this in a UCAS statement with a limit of 4,000 characters) so it stands to reason that I would focus on racial diversity in the universities I'm considering.  In the mix are Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge and King's College, London.  They all offer history courses that I would love, but widely differing student experiences. It's this caveat that has led many of my friends - even the most academically able - not to apply to Oxbridge. In some cases it's the fear of being worked so hard that there's no time for social life, in others it's the fear of being pushed to behave like someone from a specific socio-economic group, just to fit in.  Touring campuses and speaking to students has helped me a lot. At Cambridge I met Nicole, one of the black students accepted last year. She told me that it was a shock to come from London to a place with so few black students. Her mum had pushed her to apply and when she got offered a place she accepted.  "I guess when you get an offer from Cambridge, you've kind of got to say yes," she said. "Like, well, that's what I thought anyway."  Listen to Anoushka's story on Should I study at Cambridge? on BBC Sounds  The programme was made by Sue Mitchell for The Untold, on BBC Radio 4  She quickly adapted to the new environment, so the real shock came when it was time to go home at the end of her first term, she says.  "I hadn't gone back before and when I did I was at the train station [in London] and I was like, 'Why are there so many black people here?' I was just so used to not seeing them."  I got the sense that she struggles with some aspects of student life and asked her about this.  "Sometimes I have thought, 'Do I belong here?'" she said, "which I've never thought in my life before."  This worried me, as did her lament that there was just one club that played R&B, and that it charged £12 entry - more than any other student venue she'd been to! Talk about having a monopoly on the market. (And thinking about it, do I want to spend three years in a town where the nightlife is dead?)  On the other hand, Nicole said there were numerous Cambridge societies, and when she went to one of them it was like she had finally discovered where all the black students go. "I have never, like, self-segregated but I did go to a Hip-Hop Society event and I'd just never seen so many black people in one room at one time in Cambridge! I was like, 'Wow, this is where we all are'."  One of Nicole's friends told me that he didn't like talking in terms of "us" and "them" but he too had noticed self-segregation in action. "There's like a sort of a group of 10 black people who always run here," he said. "You notice them because they're always in a group, I suppose."  Asian 11.8% - includes Asian or Asian British - Indian, 5.1%; Asian or Asian British - Pakistani, 1.1%; Asian or Asian British - Bangladeshi, 0.9%; Chinese, 2.9%; other Asian background, 1.8%  Black 2.2% - includes black or black British (Caribbean), 0.2%; black or black British (African), 1.9%; other black background, 0.1%  Other & unknown 2.0% - includes Arab, 0.3%; other ethnic background, 0.7%; gypsy or traveller, 0.1%; unknown, 0.9%  In total 2,612 students were accepted, of which 64% were from state schools (including grammar schools)  I talked to Kier, a high-achieving mixed white-Barbadian boy at my school, who said the diversity issue was one of the reasons he hadn't considered Cambridge.  "I just thought the people at Cambridge wouldn't be the people in my crowd," he said. "I don't want to be with so many white kids from private schools."  I also took it up with my mixed-heritage girlfriends. We're used to swapping notes about being in the minority - we go to school in Kent, after all: we notice that we get labelled as bossy and loud when we're just confident and outspoken; we share comments about our hair. (I have to give a special mention here to my white friend who, for the first three years that we knew each other, thought that I curled my hair every morning.) Just like Kier, who wants to study with people in his crowd, my girlfriends said they wanted to share university accommodation with students who "look like them".  "Some unis are just for, like, those posh people, isn't it?" said Caitlin. "Like, I think it just happens that a lot of the private school kids are more white around here - so that's what happens."  One of the things I noticed at the Cambridge open day was how many of the prospective students were with parents who had studied there.  Alex was with his mum, Rosie, who had fallen in love with the city when she was our age, making her own choice about which university to go to. I asked her about the racial imbalance and the relatively high number of students from private schools... wouldn't she want her son to be somewhere that more reflected the real world?  "That's a good question. I mean I think I'd like him to go just wherever he'll do really well and enjoy it but I must admit, I'm probably not choosing or thinking about where he should go from that basis," she said. "You know, I just want him to go where he'll get the best degree for what he wants to do."  In my home, the pressure surrounding the application process provoked a few fiery family discussions. (But it's good to vent, right?) My mum and dad both said Cambridge would be mad not to want me. (OK, maybe they are a tad biased.) However, we've also had a lot of time to reflect on where I would be happiest.  My dad, Roy, summed up his position like this: "At the end of the day, I would like it if you get a place there - not on the basis of positive discrimination but because you're good enough and they've given it to you rather than someone from a school they've used for 300 years, or someone who's got all these connections."  He's convinced that I'd achieve a sense of belonging there. "I think it all depends on whether you find your group, your tribe... whether you can find the right group of people that are into things that you're into, and know the way you are - because it's also about personality as well."  The interview at Cambridge was not at all how I expected it to be, apart from it being with four white male academics - I did expect that.  It was fun and exciting. Thought-provoking and not even that scary. Did I decide to wear a pink fur coat that made me look like a relic of an early-2000's 50 Cent video? Yes. Did I question this after taking my admission test with a room of prospective law students, who were all suited and booted and ready for employment in the City? Yes.  That aside, I sat in a room with academics who were willing to listen to my ideas and explore my reasoning in a way that was encouraging and interesting - though maybe I would feel less positive about it if I hadn't got in.  I took some of my concerns about racial diversity - or the lack of it - to the press officer at Cambridge University, Paul Seagrove. He said that 58 black students got places in 2017, which was higher than the figure of 39 for 2016.  "We recognise that it is still too low," he said.  But he added: "What is worth bearing in mind is that this number represented a third of all black students admitted to higher education in the UK that year who attained A*A*A at A-level. So there is a problem with attainment levels in schools which we, alone, cannot fix."  Paul described outreach activities that are trying to "bust the myth that Cambridge isn't the right place for someone like me". For example, it's trying to get more black school students to attend an Easter residential course that gives them a taste of university life.  It seems that there is a self-perpetuating cycle. Smart kids from diverse backgrounds won't apply because they think they won't fit in, because they don't see people like them. This in turn means that the demographic of students will never change, so the view that it's not the right place for people of colour will persist.  Is it right for me? I've got to decide by May.  Black and minority ethnic students of all backgrounds are punching above their weight when it comes to representation at UK universities.  Read: Five charts that tell the story of diversity in UK universities  Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.


bbc--2019-04-28--Should these school clubs be kept secret from parents

Should these school clubs be kept secret from parents?

Should parents be told if their children are members of gay-straight alliances - student-run peer support groups for LGBT students and allies in their school? In one Canadian province, that question has sparked fierce debate.  Gay-straight alliances - or GSAs - were first established in the US in the 1980s.  The student-run clubs are meant to be a place where LGBT and other students can socialise and offer peer support. Research on GSAs suggests they create a "safe space" for students at a greater risk of mental health issues and discrimination, and can reduce bullying and harassment in schools where they're established.  Some 30 years after the first one was founded by a history teacher and a student at Concord Academy in Massachusetts in 1988, thousands of GSAs exist in middle and high schools across North America.  Despite their proliferation, these peer support groups have also faced resistance.  One protracted battle over GSAs has been playing out in the Canadian province of Alberta - an issue debated in the provincial legislature, in the courts, and in the media.  The latest flare up began during the recent provincial election in the province.  At issue was a policy proposed by United Conservative Party (UCP) leader Jason Kenney to undo some legal protections for the school clubs, notably one that bars school officials from telling parents if their child has joined such a group.  Critics of Kenney's plan say school staff could "out" LGBT students to parents who might not be supportive of, or might even be discriminatory of, their sexuality or gender identity - with potentially damaging consequence.  Kenney - whose UCP swept the election and who will soon be premier - argues his proposal is a compromise between supporting GSAs and respecting parental authority.  In his election night victory speech, he said that "parents know better than politicians what is best for their kids".  Alberta is not the only place GSAs have caused social friction.  In the United States, where the federal Equal Access Act guarantees that public school students have a right to form GSAs, the American Civil Liberties Union says the groups have prevailed in at least 17 federal lawsuits under the act between 1998 and 2015.  Most of the US lawsuits were over obstacles put in place by school officials opposed to the clubs, like making last minute changes to school rules to prevent a GSA from being established.  Concerns about the activities in GSAs has also cropped up in the US, with one California student battling his school telling the BBC in 2000: "This whole thing has stopped being about my club. It's become this debate about sex".  Albertan Dylan Chevalier, executive director of Sexual and Gender Acceptance Edmonton, says GSAs are about "having a place where you can be safe, relax, and take your walls down for half an hour".  Chevalier was the president of a GSA at his former high school, and he said the club hosted discussions and pizza parties, held bake sales to fund LGBT awareness campaigns and once organised a "drag and dance show".  Local skirmishes over the clubs have also been seen in the UK and in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba, which also protect a student's right to start a GSA.  University of Calgary's Darren Lund, who teaches social justice education, says that the issue has always had "the potential to be polarising".  He says there's been a rapid cultural shift towards a greater acceptance of LGBT issues in the last 15 years or so - one that makes some people feel "discomfort".  "And then politicians are quick to jump on that fear and use that fear to play into people's insecurities about these issues," he says.  In 2014, legislation was first proposed to require all the province's public schools to establish a GSA on the request of a student.  The right-leaning provincial government at the time eventually passed a law - Bill 10 - establishing that protection. It received support from all the provincial political parties.  Some cheered the move, but it also led to protests.  Advocates argued the law didn't do enough to protect LGBT students. Others called it an infringement on freedom of religion and parental rights.  In 2015, the left-leaning NDP swept to power in Alberta and added more protections for GSAs.  It passed Bill 24, which required schools, both public and private, to have a policy in place to allow for it to comply "immediately" with a student's GSA request.  Further, school officials would not be allowed to disclose a student's involvement such a club.  "No students will be outed for joining a GSA or a QSA [queer-straight alliance] in the province - it's against the law," the provincial education minister said at the time.  Schools were put on notice - if they don't follow the law they risk having accreditation and funding stripped.  Lindsay Peace, who has a son who is transgender and who is an advocate for trans youth in the province, has been a vocal supporter of protecting GSAs.  "I think it's important for kids to know that they belong," she says "And sometimes it's the only place [where they do]."  And as for parents who want to know what their children are up to at school: "they should ask them", she says.  In Alberta, the second GSA law was contentious from the get-go.  "This legislation would create a void of care for our children, into which anyone can set up shop, without proper oversight or accountability," one parents rights group stated in an op-ed.  The Calgary-based Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) filed a court challenge on behalf of a coalition of parents and 26 faith-based independent schools, arguing bills 10 and 24 breach multiple constitutional rights, including by failing to protect a parent's right to educate based on his or her own conscience and religious beliefs.  It says the law further "undermines parental rights by prohibiting parents from knowing if their child is being exposed to sexual content through a GSA".  Court documents filed by the legal group warn that "the parents are alarmed and frightened at the climate of secrecy that the School Act has created around ideological sexual clubs and related activities".  JCCF president John Carpay summed up the tension up way: "The fuss is about making these clubs mandatory in schools where the parents disagree completely with the perspective or the belief system that is being advocated by these clubs".  "It's the difference between voluntary versus coercive."  Kenney's proposed policy - to roll back some GSA protections but to keep Bill 10 in place - looks unlikely to satisfy either side.  Says Chevalier: "He's playing a game. He's pandering to the social conservative side of his base and playing a fast one [with everyone else]."  The JCCF is waiting for a court decision on whether an interim injunction it's seeking on Bill 24 will be granted.  Carpay told the BBC he's uncertain whether the schools his organisation represents will want to continue with the court challenge and fight the 2015 GSA protections that would remain in place if Kenney's government does roll back Bill 24.  Meanwhile, campaigners like Peace and Chevalier say they'll continue to fight for GSA protections in all Alberta schools.  Peace says she thinks it's students themselves who will end up creating more inclusive schools, regardless of how fierce the GSA fight might get between parents and politicians.  Calgary high school students are now organising a province-wide school walkout next month - a few days after Kenney is to take office - to protest his party's GSA plans.


bbc--2019-05-02--Should schools impose a dress code on parents

Should schools impose a dress code on parents?

When a school in Houston, Texas, announced that parents must also follow dress code guidelines, it ignited a larger debate about appropriate attire and standards for parents across the nation.  Principal Carlotta Brown of James Madison High School announced the new dress code guidelines for parents and guests a day after the mother of a prospective student was denied entry to the school because of her attire.  Wearing a T-shirt dress and headscarf, Joselyn Lewis says she was turned away by school administrators when she attempted to enrol her daughter into the school.  When she asked to see the school's dress code rules for parents, administrators called the police.  Ms Lewis explained she was wearing the scarf as she was in the process of getting her hair done - but felt she should not be told what to wear, regardless.  Effective last week, James Madison High School will reject any parent or guest wearing pyjamas, hair rollers, leggings, or a head scarf, among other clothing items.  The school declined to comment to the BBC, but the principal has continued to express support for the measure.  In a statement, Ms Brown argued that the school expects parents to set a standard for their children, by showing them what's appropriate and what is not.  "Parents, we do value you as a partner in your child's education. You are your child's first teacher. However, please know that we have to have standards, most of all we must have high standards. We are preparing your child for a prosperous future."  In a meeting on Monday, the principal also told parents that this was a successful policy at her old school.  The issue has received mixed feelings from parents in the community.  Shawn Rushing, a parent from the same school district, defended the new rules, saying: "It's so much bigger than a dress code. Schools are in place to educate children, so we have to prioritise the things that come up that appear as a distraction."  Others, like James Madison High School parent Tomiko Miller, say the new guidelines seem to reinforce discrimination based on class, gender, and race.  "I think the language used is very explicit," she says. "It lumps everyone together and overwhelmingly targets women and moms, on campus."  Ms Miller also suggested that the school give out graduation robes if school authorities perceived a parent as too revealing, because "turning parents away sends a dangerous message".  The Houston Federation of Teachers has also weighed in.  "While we may agree that public decorum should be maintained on public schools, the implementation of this policy was flawed," says Federation President Zeph Capo.  "It is unfortunate that a student was denied enrolment based on a dress code. Educating students should be our priority."  While the debate in Texas surfaced only recently, James Madison is not the only high school attempting to create a dress code for parents.  Lawmakers in Memphis, Tennessee, are currently trying to create a bill that will enforce dress code guidelines for parents in districts across the state. If the bill is passed in July, it could go into effect next year.  State congressman Antonio Parkinson has said that the policies would not be applied in a discriminatory fashion and that he is receiving positive feedback from constituents.  But some residents have continued to push back, saying this law could prevent parent participation in schools as some parents will not see themselves fit for these new standards.  Parents from different parts of the country have also begun to chime in, sharing their thoughts on social media.  One mother in Indiana, who asked to be kept anonymous, told the BBC that the policies in Houston and Memphis were "a warning that community members need to be concerned about".  "I'm opposed to these policies because it sends a message that parents must identify themselves in a certain way and if they don't they'll be ostracised, judged and criminalised."  She continued: "The school in Houston just proved a point about a slippery slope. What's next?"  Both of these recent efforts have added to a larger debate happening around the world.  In the UK, a dress code controversy involving a mother at Skerne Park Academy, a primary school, has divided the Darlington community.  Karen Routh says she ignored the school's request for parents and students not to wear pyjamas because she was running late.  While the school's head teacher said this was setting a bad example, Ms Routh explained that her priority was getting her child to school on time and was late because she didn't feel well.  Dress codes in public settings - like for customers in restaurants or stores - are not a new concept. Enforcing a policy for parents, who do not attend schools however, is a more sensitive topic.  As the discussion continues, some argue that this controversy has larger implications about struggles that different families face across the world, while others suggest it is a needed standard that benefits students' education.  The complicated balance continues to leave communities divided on whether it is an appropriate action or schools are simply going too far.


bbc--2019-07-04--China Muslims Xinjiang schools used to separate children from families

China Muslims: Xinjiang schools used to separate children from families

China is deliberately separating Muslim children from their families, faith and language in its far western region of Xinjiang, according to new research.  At the same time as hundreds of thousands of adults are being detained in giant camps, a rapid, large-scale campaign to build boarding schools is under way.  Based on publicly available documents, and backed up by dozens of interviews with family members overseas, the BBC has gathered some of the most comprehensive evidence to date about what is happening to children in the region.  Records show that in one township alone more than 400 children have lost not just one but both parents to some form of internment, either in the camps or in prison.  Formal assessments are carried out to determine whether the children are in need of "centralised care".  Alongside the efforts to transform the identity of Xinjiang's adults, the evidence points to a parallel campaign to systematically remove children from their roots.  China's tight surveillance and control in Xinjiang, where foreign journalists are followed 24 hours a day, make it impossible to gather testimony there. But it can be found in Turkey.  In a large hall in Istanbul, dozens of people queue to tell their stories, many of them clutching photographs of children, all now missing back home in Xinjiang.  "I don't know who is looking after them," one mother says, pointing to a picture of her three young daughters, "there is no contact at all."  Another mother, holding a photo of three sons and a daughter, wipes away her tears. "I heard that they've been taken to an orphanage," she says.  In 60 separate interviews, in wave after wave of anxious, grief-ridden testimony, parents and other relatives give details of the disappearance in Xinjiang of more than 100 children.  They are all Uighurs - members of Xinjiang's largest, predominantly Muslim ethnic group that has long had ties of language and faith to Turkey. Thousands have come to study or to do business, to visit family, or to escape China's birth control limits and the increasing religious repression.  But over the past three years, they have found themselves trapped after China began detaining hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other minorities in giant camps.  The Chinese authorities say the Uighurs are being educated in "vocational training centres" in order to combat violent religious extremism. But evidence shows that many are being detained for simply expressing their faith - praying or wearing a veil - or for having overseas connections to places like Turkey.  For these Uighurs, going back means almost certain detention. Phone contact has been severed - even speaking to relatives overseas is now too dangerous for those in Xinjiang.  With his wife detained back home, one father tells me he fears some of his eight children may now be in the care of the Chinese state.  "I think they've been taken to child education camps," he says.  New research commissioned by the BBC sheds light on what is really happening to these children and many thousands of others.  Dr Adrian Zenz is a German researcher widely credited with exposing the full extent of China's mass detentions of adult Muslims in Xinjiang. Based on publicly available official documents, his report paints a picture of an unprecedented school expansion drive in Xinjiang.  Campuses have been enlarged, new dormitories built and capacity increased on a massive scale. Significantly, the state has been growing its ability to care full-time for large numbers of children at precisely the same time as it has been building the detention camps.  And it appears to be targeted at precisely the same ethnic groups.  In just one year, 2017, the total number of children enrolled in kindergartens in Xinjiang increased by more than half a million. And Uighur and other Muslim minority children, government figures show, made up more than 90% of that increase.  As a result, Xinjiang's pre-school enrolment level has gone from below the national average to the highest in China by far.  In the south of Xinjiang alone, an area with the highest concentration of Uighur populations, the authorities have spent an eye watering $1.2bn on the building and upgrading of kindergartens.  Mr Zenz's analysis suggests that this construction boom has included the addition of large amounts of dormitory space.  Xinjiang's education expansion is driven, it appears, by the same ethos as underlies the mass incarceration of adults. And it is clearly affecting almost all Uighur and other minority children, whether their parents are in the camps or not.  In 2018 work began on a site for two new boarding schools in Xinjiang's southern city of Yecheng (known as Kargilik in Uighur).  Dragging the slider reveals the pace of construction - the two middle schools, separated by a shared sports field, are each three times larger than the national average and were built in little more than a year.  In April last year, the county authorities relocated 2,000 children from the surrounding villages into yet another giant boarding middle school, Yecheng County Number 4.  Government propaganda extols the virtues of boarding schools as helping to "maintain social stability and peace" with the "school taking the place of the parents." And Mr Zenz suggests there is a deeper purpose.  "Boarding schools provide the ideal context for a sustained cultural re-engineering of minority societies," he argues.  Just as with the camps, his research shows that there is now a concerted drive to all but eliminate the use of Uighur and other local languages from school premises. Individual school regulations outline strict, points-based punishments for both students and teachers if they speak anything other than Chinese while in school.  And this aligns with other official statements claiming that Xinjiang has already achieved full Chinese language teaching in all of its schools.  Speaking to the BBC, Xu Guixiang, a senior official with Xinjiang's Propaganda Department, denies that the state is having to care for large numbers of children left parentless as a result.  "If all family members have been sent to vocational training then that family must have a severe problem," he says, laughing. "I've never seen such a case."  But perhaps the most significant part of Mr Zenz's work is his evidence that shows that the children of detainees are indeed being channelled into the boarding school system in large numbers.  There are the detailed forms used by local authorities to log the situations of children with parents in vocational training or in prison, and to determine whether they need centralised care.  Mr Zenz found one government document that details various subsidies available to "needy groups", including those families where "both a husband and a wife are in vocational training". And a directive issued to education bureaus by the city of Kashgar that mandates them to look after the needs of students with parents in the camps as a matter of urgency.  Schools should "strengthen psychological counselling", the directive says, and "strengthen students' thought education" - a phrase that finds echoes in the camps holding their parents.  It is clear that the effect of the mass internments on children is now viewed as a significant societal issue, and that some effort is going into dealing with it, although it is not something the authorities are keen to publicise.  Some of the relevant government documents appear to have been deliberately hidden from search engines by using obscure symbols in place of the term "vocational training". That said, in some instances the adult detention camps have kindergartens built close by, and, when visiting, Chinese state media reporters have extolled their virtues.  These boarding schools, they say, allow minority children to learn "better life habits" and better personal hygiene than they would at home. Some children have begun referring to their teachers as "mummy".  We telephoned a number of local Education Bureaus in Xinjiang to try to find out about the official policy in such cases. Most refused to speak to us, but some gave brief insights into the system.  We asked one official what happens to the children of those parents who have been taken to the camps.  "They're in boarding schools," she replied. "We provide accommodation, food and clothes… and we've been told by the senior level that we must look after them well."  In the hall in Istanbul, as the stories of broken families come tumbling out, there is raw despair and deep resentment too.  "Thousands of innocent children are being separated from their parents and we are giving our testimonies constantly," one mother tells me. "Why does the world keep silent when knowing these facts?"  Back in Xinjiang, the research shows that all children now find themselves in schools that are secured with "hard isolation closed management measures." Many of the schools bristle with full-coverage surveillance systems, perimeter alarms and 10,000 Volt electric fences, with some school security spending surpassing that of the camps.  The policy was issued in early 2017, at a time when the detentions began to be dramatically stepped up. Was the state, Mr Zenz wonders, seeking to pre-empt any possibility on the part of Uighur parents to forcibly recover their children?  "I think the evidence for systematically keeping parents and children apart is a clear indication that Xinjiang's government is attempting to raise a new generation cut off from original roots, religious beliefs and their own language," he tells me.  "I believe the evidence points to what we must call cultural genocide."


bbc--2019-09-01--The back-to-school question some believe we should ditch

"What did you do on your summer break?"  It's a back-to-school assignment a lot of people would have written at some point during their education.  But as many schools in the UK and North America return for a new academic year this week, some people on social media have been debating whether the common writing task, and others like it, are problematic.  It came after a US-based writer posted an anecdote on Friday - earmarked as a "public service announcement" to teachers - about a friend's child who had returned to school after unexpectedly losing a parent over the summer.  She said the grieving child had completed the assigned task "in horrifying detail" about their tragic loss.  The original tweet, which has now been shared hundreds of times, was met with a wave of people sharing their own experiences.  Some who lost parents during childhood agreed that they found similar assignments, like making family-trees, upsetting. They shared "horror stories" of being questioned in school about personal loss or family difficulties.  Others defended the writing task or pointed out that grief isn't the only circumstance in which students can feel alienated by the question.  Tiffany Grayson, who was raised by a single mother in Harbor Springs in Michigan, was one of many who pointed out that tasks like the "summer question" risk embarrassing students whose families have financial struggles, too.  "This whole thread made me relive so much shame I had about these assignments," the 34-year-old posted. "When classmates were like 'Went to Europe!' and I was like 'only had the electricity cut off once'…"  Some in the replies said they believed concepts like sleep-away summer camp, popular in the US, only existed in Hollywood movies and television shows until their peers shared their summer stories.  Ms Grayson told the BBC reading the conversation brought her "instantly back" to feeling like "a nauseous little kid" who dreaded going back to school for this very reason.  "Especially as I got old enough to work and contribute - I couldn't even fathom the luxury of resting throughout the break," she said. "And even I'm lucky. Looking back I know kids had it even rougher than me.  "I can't imagine the agony of having a serious illness, incarceration or death in my close family and having to face excited classmates talking about beach trips."  A number of teachers also joined in the social media debate by sharing their own experiences - positive and negative - about assigning writing tasks that dredge up personal issues.  "Get more creative with your prompts, y'all," Kayla Meyers, based in Texas, urged fellow educators on the Twitter thread.  "My first year was really a lot of trial and error," the writing teacher, 27, told the BBC. "I honestly made a lot of mistakes that some of the people in the thread were bringing up."  She recalled asking young students to write an autobiography only to get inundated with questions and concerns about personal issues they felt awkward discussing in class.  "I was just overwhelmed with embarrassment over it," she said. "I couldn't believe with all my academic and sensitivity training I'd made such a faux pas."  Now working in an online school with students from an incredibly diverse range of financial, religious and family backgrounds, Kayla says she only assigns broad and inclusive writing prompts.  "They allow students to talk about their own personal experience, while still giving them the opportunity to avoid doing so," she said.  Canadian Nate Van Kampen, 39, lost his mother while still at high-school. Now a teacher himself in Hamilton, Ontario, he was one of those on the social media thread who pushed back against some of the criticism, insisting he found speaking in school about his personal loss "so therapeutic".  "Of course you have to be careful about the kind of assignments you assign," he told the BBC. "But I think it's important to give students a voice if they want to speak to a negative experience - especially if you have a supportive school community or classroom."  Age and context were crucial factors to bear in mind, he said, adding that teachers should be mindful of allowing for "opt outs" or work-arounds to anyone who may find tasks difficult or challenging.  Jen Alexander, a former special needs teacher and current school counsellor, agrees. She has written a book about trauma sensitivity in the classroom and travels around the US teaching others about the subject.  Ms Alexander says educators need to adjust their mindsets to pre-empt the multitude of situations a child could be going through while keeping in mind broader issues, like racial marginalisation.  "It's about being ready, whether we know their stories or not, to offer options to students," she told the BBC. "So maybe instead of making a Father's Day or Mother's Day card, they can make a card for someone who matters to them."  Jillian Warring Bird, a high-school language teacher in Toronto, said she gets around any awkwardness by allowing her students creative freedom.  "I tell all my classes: 'I'll ask personal questions to help prompt you to communicate in the target language. I don't care if what you say is true,'" she posted. "'You can lie in this class, as long as you lie in French/Spanish.'"  Other people suggested alternative tasks that are less invasive such as: What are you looking forward to about the school year?  "I always asked, 'What is your favourite thing about the summer?' instead," another user suggested. "It reached across the economic inequality in my class and said a lot about the kids instead of opportunities."  Another said they assigned the less-traditional "What was the most boring thing you did this summer?" task instead.  "It made them all laugh and equalised it a bit," they said.


bbc--2019-11-26--Kamala Harris school plan: The two hours costing US parents thousands

Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris has proposed new legislation to address a thorny parental problem - how to care for children whose school days end hours before the workday. Journalist Kara Voght explains why it sparked such a reaction and how this issue affects parents worldwide.  In the US, the average school day is roughly seven hours long, beginning just after 8:00 and ending around 15:00, a vestige of an earlier era when it was less likely that both parents worked outside the home.  Most schools begin their academic year in August and end it in June, with 180 schooldays in between. In the US, schools close for a two-day weekend and a handful of federal holidays, as well as an average of 29 addition days used for teachers' professional development, parent-teacher conferences, and additional vacation time.  These specifications don't neatly align with the work demands most American parents face.  Nearly 70% of parents with school-age children work a "9-to-5" schedule, and school closures during the year outpace what the average American has in holiday, vacation, and paid leave by nearly two weeks.  Since fewer than half of all elementary schools offer after-school care, most parents either have to pay for private caregivers - which costs an average of $6,600 (£5,100) per year - or scale back their working hours to make up the difference.  The professional sacrifice has typically fallen to mothers, a million of whom work less than full-time in order to provide caregiving responsibilities to elementary school-aged children.  Low-income mothers and mothers of colour, whose jobs often grant less flexibility and time off, often shoulder even greater burdens that ask them to choose between caring for their children or having a job at all.  Experts estimate that the United States loses $57bn in economic productivity each year thanks to the school calendar.  Harris' proposal aims to address this discrepancy. Her bill, called the Family Friendly Schools Act, is a pilot programme that would give 500 schools that serve a high proportion of low-income families up to $5m dollars in grants to develop programming for students from at least 8:00 to 18:00 Monday through Friday.  Schools would be expected to stay open every day of the school year except for weekends and federal holidays; if they want to close for any other reason, they need to provide a full day of enrichment activities for students.  The longer day wouldn't require more classroom time, however; Harris imagines that school districts would work alongside community partners to develop "high-quality, culturally relevant, linguistically accessible, developmentally appropriate academic, athletic, or enrichment opportunities for students". • The body-clock science behind later school start times • The back-to-school question some believe we should ditch  In other words, this might be early, mid-day, or afternoon programming that looks more like after-school programmes that exist in some school districts now. Teachers and staff would not be expected to work more hours under Harris' vision; instead, the grant money would be used to hire additional staff or to pay teachers who volunteered to work more hours.  When the news of Harris' proposal went live, the backlash was swift, ferocious, and, surprisingly bipartisan.  Conservatives accused Harris of weakening the mandate of public education; National Review, a right-leaning magazine, took two swings at Harris' plan, asserting it would turn schools into daycare centres, destabilise community ties, and overexpose children to the exhausting social dynamics of their peers.  Liberals, meanwhile, criticised Harris for finding a solution to what they think is the wrong problem. The school day isn't too short, they argued - the work day is too long, and children shouldn't have to bear the brunt of capitalistic ambitions by staying at school for extra hours.  The concise criticisms on Twitter were even more scathing.  For some, it was an issue of government overreach. "It is not, and should not be, the federal government's job to dictate local school hours," Matt Welch, editor at-large at Reason, a conservative magazine, said.  "Teachers won't have enough time to Lyft and Doordash, though," one Twitter user wrote, a sarcastic flick at the fact that teachers increasingly pick up additional gig economy jobs to make up for stagnant wages (even though Harris' plan explicitly would not require teachers to take on any additional responsibilities).  Others took issue with how Harris framed her argument.  "Whose idea was it to pitch a pilot programme funding after-school activities as an extension of the 'school day'?" New Republic writer Osita Nwanevu wrote. "The bill literally bars teachers from working additional hours unless they volunteer."  Though most of the outrage and jubilation had been directed at Harris and the politics of the Democratic primary, the reactions to this phenomenon were nothing new.  A previous article I wrote for The Atlantic that called attention to the scheduling discrepancies went viral as it elicited a similar set of responses. Some motherhood-focused publications lauded the piece for naming a problem working mothers acutely felt.  Others, like famed American psychologist and author Adam Grant, called for a shortening of the workday. "We can be as productive and creative in six focused hours as in eight unfocused hours," he wrote on Twitter.  The plight of the American working parent is a familiar one around the world, and countries have tried to address it to varying degrees.  The UK has similar parameters on its school year and day - students attend school for 190 days per year and days generally run from 9:00 to 15:00. But like the US, schools generally don't provide free after-school care, leaving parent similarly scrambling for options.  In Germany, students attend school for a brief five-hour day that begins around 8:00 and ends around 13:00. French students, who only attend school for 162 days a year, have a day that closely mirrors the French workday. They're in school from roughly 8:30 to 16:30, but get two breaks and a lunch period that lasts at least an hour and half.  In both countries, nation subsidies help to pay for before- or after-school care available to most parents. Both also offer substantially more vacation time than either the US or UK.  The European experience offers a sharp contrast to some Asian countries, where students spend much more time in school. • Reality Check: Do UK parents pay the most for childcare?  School is in session in China from September to mid-July for a whopping 245 days per year. Their school days run long, from 7:30 to 17:00, but have a long two-hour lunch break in the middle.  Parents, too, work long days, and care for children after-school historically fell to grandparents. These days, parents increasingly pay for expensive after-school tutoring to give their children an academic edge on their peers.  The correlation between school day length and students' productivity is a tenuous one.  China outperformed the US and European countries on an international assessment of students' science, maths, and reading, but not by much.  Kara Voght is a journalist with Mother Jones based in Washington DC. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Nieman Storyboard, and Politico.