In Other News: Extinctions, shrinking habitat spur ‘rewilding’ in cities; Across vast Muslim world, LGBTQ people remain marginalized

Published 12:00 am Saturday, December 10, 2022

Many kids are struggling. Is special education the answer?

Schools contending with soaring student mental health needs and other challenges have been struggling to determine just how much the pandemic is to blame. Are emotional struggles the sign of a disability that will impair their learning, or something more temporary? For students who don’t qualify for special education, where should they go for help? It all adds to desperation for parents trying to figure out how best to help their children. To qualify for special education services, a child’s school performance must be suffering because of a disability in one of 13 categories, according to federal law.

Across vast Muslim world, LGBTQ people remain marginalizedHere and there, across the far-flung Muslim and Arab worlds, LGBTQ people see glimmers of progress — but those are rare exceptions. Many Muslim nations criminalize gay and lesbian sex — including World Cup host Qatar. LGBTQ people routinely are rejected by their families, denounced by Islamic authorities, hounded by security forces, and limited to clandestine social lives. Appeals for change from LGBTQ-friendly nations are routinely dismissed as unwarranted outside interference. In some countries, apparent advances for LGBTQ people have been followed by setbacks. Lebanon and Turkey are prime examples

Extinctions, shrinking habitat spur ‘rewilding’ in citiesIn a bustling metro area of 4.3 million people, Yale University wildlife biologist Nyeema Harris ventures into isolated thickets to study Detroit’s most elusive residents — coyotes, foxes, raccoons and skunks among them. Harris and colleagues have placed trail cameras in woodsy sections of 25 city parks for the past five years. They’ve recorded thousands of images of animals that emerge mostly at night to roam and forage, revealing a wild side many locals might not know exists. “We’re getting more and more exposure to wildlife in urban environments,” Harris said recently while checking several of the devices fastened to trees with steel cables near the ground. “As we’re changing their habitats, as we’re expanding the footprint of urbanization, … we’ll increasingly come in contact with them.” Animal and plant species are dying off at an alarming rate, with up to 1 million threatened with extinction, according to a 2019 United Nations report. Their plight is stirring calls for “rewilding” places where they thrived until driven out by development, pollution and climate change. Rewilding generally means reviving natural systems in degraded locations — sometimes with a helping hand. That might mean removing dams, building tunnels to reconnect migration pathways severed by roads, or reintroducing predators such as wolves to help balance ecosystems. But after initial assists, there’s little human involvement.