Let's write about environmental protection of world turtles!

Reported in the South Florida Sun Sentinel news

by Genia Naro-Maciel

This World Sea Turtle Day is as much a cause for celebration as a call to action. 

On South Florida's beaches, turtle mothers are coming ashore to nest, and many populations are recovering. After decades of protection, green sea turtles are rebounding and no longer classified as endangered on the global Red List of Threatened Species. These rare beacons of hope amid otherwise dire forecasts illuminate paths to a sustainable future, one that could benefit endangered organisms, fragile ecosystems and human societies alike.

This is also a call for action. 

Many will remember the viral video of a sea turtle having a plastic straw extricated from its nostril, sparking numerous anti-pollution campaigns. But this was just the tip of the iceberg. Conservation funding remains limited and uneven, yet pollution, coastal development, climate change, harvest, bycatch and disease continue to threaten sea turtles.
In the Gulf, the catastrophic 2010, Deepwater Horizon oil spill killed hundreds of thousands of animals, including sea turtles, destroying livelihoods and ecosystems.
Even so, on April 12, just 10 days before Earth Day, the oil industry gained full exemption from protecting endangered species there, casting a shadow over near-extinct Rice’s whales and critically endangered sea turtles.
The Kemp’s Ridley is the planet’s most endangered sea turtle, due primarily to intense historical egg harvest. Containing one of only two global nesting sites, the Gulf’s Padre Island offers essential protection from habitat loss and ongoing threats. The people and ecosystems that rely on them are affected too. These beautiful organisms sustain economies through fisheries and tourism, and help many who depend on thriving marine life. They support healthy oceans and coasts by indicating environmental health as sentinel species, engaging people in the planet as iconic flagship species, and maintaining food web balance as keystone species.
In South Florida, globally renowned rescue and educational centers like Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, Broward County Sea Turtle Conservation Program, Miami-Dade County Sea Turtle Conservation Program, Mote Marine Lab, and Turtle Hospital in Marathon bring turtles to safety. With local Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Networks and committed volunteers, government and commercial partners, they have rehabilitated and released thousands of vulnerable turtles while educating the public and protecting key areas.
With the support of both Floridians and visitors, Florida now represents the complex promise of endangered species recovery, with nesting numbers for some loggerheads, leatherbacks and green turtles rising significantly over the past few decades amid fluctuations. These gains reflect long-term protections such as safeguarding nesting beaches and reducing fisheries bycatch, including banning disorienting light pollution.
At local through international levels, ingredients for success center on local community involvement, supported by volunteers, scientists, governments, businesses and other professionals, in legally protecting species and areas. 

Over 50 years of conservation efforts reveal that individual through federal actions have a good chance of attaining win-win situations benefiting local communities, endangered species and the planet.

Even so, arguments against environmental protection focus on prioritizing economic progress and industrial deregulation over conservation. This is a false either/or choice. There are numerous well-documented ways to support economies, ecosystems and society at once through sustainable development. Interconnected, healthy systems offer many jobs, and protecting life on Earth helps keep our planet healthy and safe, as extinctions and ecosystem collapses disrupt food systems, the climate and economies.

So on World Sea Turtle Day, enjoy and support your sea turtles and protected areas. Watch turtles nest or release hatchlings with the Loggerhead Marinelife Center, which may well be one of the most inspiring experiences of a lifetime. 

Visit a turtle hospital, get a Florida sea turtle specialty license plate to support conservation, use turtle-friendly lights, take a run for sea turtles, think about what you buy, or whom you plan to vote for in this year’s elections. Governments and businesses can sustain local, national and international conservation organizations, including those outlined above, and federal efforts can focus on balanced development and planetary health, working inclusively towards a sustainable future.

Genia Naro-Maciel is a sea turtle biologist, clinical professor of sustainability, environmental justice and health in liberal studies at New York University, and an OpEd Project Public Voices Fellow.

Let's support buying banned books on sale in Florida!

https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/4043876-our-goal-is-to-spread-literature-florida-couple-sells-banned-books-at-new-book-store/

‘Our goal is to spread literature’: Florida couple sells banned book. Their goal is to sell donated books at inexpensive prices, with the priciest book in the shop costing only $8.

An echo report published in Changing America: Shared Destiny, Shared Responsibility- published in The Hill* blog by Jack Royer:

"Books were always very important to me. So when I found out someone was throwing away 10,000 pounds of books a week away, I was like 'What? We can't have that.'"

Pinellas County couple selling banned books at new book store.

George and Sarah Brooks have turned their love of books into a full-time job after opening their store, The Book Rescuers, in Pinellas Park.

Their goal is to sell donated books at inexpensive prices, with the priciest book in the shop costing only $8.

They maintain a shelf of books banned across the state and country.

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (WFLA) — A couple in Florida is seeking to provide the people of Pinellas County with more accessible, affordable books — including some titles that have been banned by schools in the area.

George and Sarah Brooks have turned their love of books into a full-time job after opening their store, The Book Rescuers, in Pinellas Park. Their goal is to sell donated books at inexpensive prices, with the priciest book in the shop costing only $8.

The Brooks’ effort began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when they found out some online booksellers were trashing titles that had little resale value.

“It blew our mind. We were like, ‘That’s insane, can we take your trash and sort it?'” Sarah Brooks remembered.

“Books were always very important to me. So when I found out someone was throwing away 10,000 pounds of books a week away, I was like ‘What? We can’t have that,'” she added.

Among the books available at The Book Rescuers are titles banned in some school districts across Florida and around the country. 

A shelf dedicated to these “banned books” contains entire sets donated by teachers who were told they needed to remove them from their classrooms.

The store’s owners, however, insist their efforts have nothing to do with politics.

“I understand that people don’t want their kids reading certain things and I also feel like you don’t have a right to tell me what my kids can read,” she added. 

*(NEXSTAR) – (By Alex Martichoux in April 2023) Attempts to ban books in libraries and schools reached a 20-year high, the American Library Association said. The group announced it had documented 1,269 demands to censor more than 2,500 titles in 2022.

That’s the highest number recorded since the ALA, which advocates for expanding libraries, literacy and intellectual freedom, started keeping track in 2001.

The 13 most challenged titles in 2022, according to the ALA, were:

“Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe
“All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson
“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison
“Flamer” by Mike Curato
“Looking for Alaska” by John Green
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
“Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison
“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie
“Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Perez
“A Court of Mist and Fury” by Sarah J. Maas
“Crank” by Ellen Hopkins
“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews
“This Book Is Gay” by Juno Dawson

The ALA defines a challenge as a “formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.”

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Let's write about the illiterate people that want to ban books!

 Stand up to moral police, book banners

This echo opinion letter was published in TCPalm Stuart News in Florida:

Dear editor: I want to address the book bans happening in this state- Florida.

Parents essentially can now pull a book they think is questionable. Many have done so without even reading the book. How can you deem something inappropriate you yourself have not read?

The ignorance and audacity of these people is astounding. They are literally saying with their actions, "Well, I don't know what it's about, so it must be bad; let's ban it."Case in point, a young Black poet's work can no longer be read by younger students. Not one person who called for the ban has read it. They are banning things they know nothing about, perpetrating ignorant, baseless moral decisions for every Floridian.

I don't need moral police❗😠

This is America, not Afghanistan, where the moral police walk around punishing those they deem immoral.

Wake up, Florida! 

For every ignorant person that bans a book, there should be thousands of us fighting it. Personally, I encourage everyone to read the banned books. I've read almost all of them — some as a child, some as a teen and some as an adult.

My favorite book at 9 years old was "To Kill a Mockingbird" and I can honestly say it did not harm me in any way. All it did was help me be a more empathetic person to others. I don't see any of the myriad of ignorant reasons these people have come up with for banning books like this.

So Florida, stand up to ignorance. Read and share these books and use your voices and votes against this moral policing done by the extremists who haven't even read the books in question.

Reading kills no one; but ignorance does.

Adele Burich, Vero Beach