Australia’s Giant Cuttlefish in Trouble as Weak Spawning Season Continues

Australian giant cuttlefish may be in trouble, as evidenced by low summer spawning numbers (flickr| richard ling)

This summer, numbers are way down.

Australia’s ABC Radio recently interviewed a local commercial fisherman who reported that he has only seen four this year—rather than the usual “hundreds of thousands.” Other news outlets have been picking it up too.

Researchers say the low numbers are cause for concern, and they don’t yet know what’s causing the trend (though “BHP Billiton’s proposed desalination plant” nearby probably won’t help. It would reportedly pour “huge quantities of hypersaline wastewater” into Spencer Gulf and make the area unpalatable for a variety of species). A new study finds that the cuttlefish breeding colony had decreased by 78% in the past decade, and last year marked a record low.

Plan to Exonerate Hawaiian Monk Seals Relies on Reality-TV-style Cameras

Hawaiian Monk Seal photo by: U. S. Fish and WIldlife Service

The image rehabilitation plan comes as local fishermen ramp up  claims that the seals have been depleting area fish stocks. Recent cases of people pestering—and in some cases killing—the seals have come partly as a reaction to these rumors, and spurred scientists to “glue submersible cameras onto the seals’ backs, using the footage to prove to fishermen the animals are not harming their way of life.”

You can find out more about habitat threats to monk seals or read Les Welsh’s blog post from April about people intentionally killing the seals in the waters around Kaua’i (and how you can help).

Video: Blue Shark Chomps Giant Squid

Giant squid are mysterious, awesome and locked in an eternal arms race with sperm whales. Live sightings are so rare that even footage of a recently dead Architeuthis is a pretty big deal. Recently, Australian angler and journalist Al McGlashan came across a largely-intact carcass whose bright red coloration indicated it had died recently. While he filmed, a blue shark tore into the squid, thus launching  the best cephalopod viral phenomenon of 2012 (so far…I eagerly await your videos of octopuses singing ‘Call Me, Maybe’). Take a look at Field & Stream’s exclusive full-length video and photos right this second.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Canadian Lobster is Blue, Yet in Decent Spirits

Canadian lobster boat captain Bobby Stoddard caught a lobster in early May that resembled a giant Avatar cat person. That’s the way we say ‘it was blue’ in America now.

Blue lobsters do occur, but they’re uncommon. According to The University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, “only an estimated one in two million lobsters is blue” (which makes them rare, but not quite as rare as live, naturally red or yellow lobsters, which are estimated at one in ten million and one in 30 million, respectively). Blue lobsters come about due to “a genetic defect that causes the lobster to produce an excessive amount of a particular protein.”

You can learn more about invertebrates in our Wildlife Library.

Manta Ray Ultrasound Sheds Light on Liquid Oxygen Intake

A study recently published in Biology Letters is the first to show how manta ray embryos get oxygen, based on video from an ultrasound performed on a pregnant ray in 2008.

Though manta rays, like many other cartilaginous fish, give birth to live young, they lack an oxygen-giving umbilical cord or placenta. According to researchers, “the baby ray was raising and lowering its jaw, pumping uterine fluid in through its mouth and spiracle.” The continuous regulated flow of the fluid over the ray’s gills allowed the embryo to extract oxygen (the baby was “a healthy female, 2 meters from wingtip to wingtip and weighing 50 kilograms” at birth). According to Taketeru Tomita, a fish biologist at Hokkaido University Museum, this is the first time that scientists have observed fetal viviparious vertebrates pumping liquid to extract oxygen.

Great Whites Summering in Cape Cod

Researchers tag a shark near Chatham, MA, in 2009. Tagged great whites recently returned to Cape Cod to feed on seals. (flickr | Massachusetts Energy and Environmental Affairs)

Researchers say the sharks were drawn to the area by “a growing seal population on Monomoy Island,” redoubt of migrating birds and other non-humans for hundreds of years. They haven’t come close enough to tourist beaches to warrant any official warning, though mayhem will presumably occur if the star-crossed Brody family gets too close.

For more on ocean creatures, see Kevin Coyle’s post from last year about animals’ various methods of swimming or my post about the Top 5 Real Sea Serpents (including the giant squid). You can also check out an article about sperm whales and the threat posed to them after the oil spill in the Gulf  of Mexico.

If you’ve seen a story that you think should be covered in the next Ocean Wildlife Roundup, please let me know in the comments below, email me at greenbergm@nwf.org, or tell me on Twitter @MaxTGreenberg.

A few hours ago, a news item about our old pals at the Heartland Institute was flying around the internet at light speed.

It seems that in preparation for their annual climate denial conference, which this year ends the day before NWF and concerned citizens will be gathering in Chicago for public hearings on proposed limits on carbon pollution from coal fired power plants, the partly Koch and ExxonMobil-funded right-wing think tank decided to suggest that ‘believing’ in climate change puts you in league with serial killers and terrorists. You know, MAYBE. Just throwing it out there.

Via The Guardian (and now many, many others):

The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based rightwing thinktank notorious for promoting climate scepticism, has launched quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.

I’ll let its own press release for its upcoming conference explain, as there’s simply no need to finesse it further:

Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world’s most notorious criminals say they “still believe in global warming” – and ask viewers if they do, too…The billboard series features Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber; Charles Manson, a mass murderer; and Fidel Castro, a tyrant. Other global warming alarmists who may appear on future billboards include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in 2010).

Aside from being an example of the most ridiculous sort of ad hominem attack imaginable, this campaign is rife with logical and organizational inconsistencies. Kate Sheppard from Mother Jones points out that it hasn’t even been three months since Heartland issued a release carping about the need for “common decency” in discussing climate change. Classy move.

Heartland’s statement accompanying the project launch stated that “people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society.” And yet, “the United Nations, the so-called mainstream media, and leading political figures” are also talking about climate change. So, which is it? Fringe phenomenon, or incredibly widespread (and presumably conspiratorial) trend? As proof of its own bona fides, Heartland claims that “many of the world’s leading scientists, economists, and political leaders” have appeared at its climate denial conferences. WHOA—‘leading scientists?’ Aren’t those guys just fringe radicals? (actually, yes, the ones who attend Heartland conferences probably are.)

(Also of note: it’s highly questionable whether some of the featured madmen even had any special affinity for climate change as a cause. As E&E News reports (sub. req.), the words “climate change” don’t appear in the Unabomber’s manifesto, nor are there references to “global warming” or “carbon.”)

Less than an hour before people on the East Coast left work for the weekend, Heartland Institute President and CEO Joe Bast issued the following statement in response to a massive outcry:

We will stop running [the billboard] at 4:00 p.m. CST today. (It’s a digital billboard, so a simple phone call is all it takes.)

The Heartland Institute knew this was a risk when deciding to test it, but decided it was a necessary price to make an emotional appeal to people who otherwise aren’t following the climate change debate.

So, make a note: from now on, lying and acting like a disgruntled online commenter who invokes Hitler to end an argument = ‘an emotional appeal.’

General Motors pulled its funding of Heartland in March over the last round of climate denial messaging. One wonders how Heartland’s other funders will feel about this ‘test.’

Student delegates at the Alaska Youth for Environmental Action Civics & Conservation Summit in March with Governor Sean Parnell. (Photo courtesy of AYEA)

The theme for the Civics & Conservation Summit was “Local Food & Wild Salmon,” but its purpose went far beyond that.

During the training, delegates worked on talking to media; talking to elected officials; how to read a bill; and how to impact decisions leaders make about the environment. They also honed their public speaking skills through skits and group presentations.

The students had a chance to meet Governor Sean Parnell and honor AYEA’s Legislators of the Year (State Senators Gary Stevens (R-Kodiak), Hollis French (D-Anchorage) and Bill Wielechowski (D-Anchorage)), but the most important aspect of the summit was the time student delegates spent advocating for some issues vital to the future of the state’s natural resources.

See a few of the delegates in the video below talking about their reasons for loving Wild Alaskan salmon, or listen to this story by Juneau’s KTOO “Young Conservationists learn about legislative process.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some issues on AYEA’s docket, from AYEA Program Manager Megan McBride:

• Senate Bill 3 – An Act providing for state funding for school lunch and breakfast. Alaska is one of just a few states that don’t provide any state funding to match federal funds. For several years, AYEA teens have been advocating for more local Alaskan food to be served in schools. Two years ago, AYEA advocated for the Farm to School Bill that facilitates locally grown products to be served in Alaskan schools. Given the tight budget school food is on, however, it’s been hard to make progress since that bill has passed.
• Madeline Rafferty (Age 17, Fairbanks): “This bill is essential in providing healthier meals to students all across the state by incorporating locally grown and caught food in school lunches. Not only would this improve the quality of school lunches, but it would support the local businesses providing this food. It is well known that eating a healthy breakfast increases academic performance and doing so will raise test scores.”

• House Bill 100 – The bill outlaws growing or cultivating genetically engineered fish in the state. GE salmon has been a topic at the federal level after a company submitted a request for a permit to grow and sell GE salmon in the US. Alaska’s federal delegation – Senators Murkowski (R) and Begich (D) and Representative Young (R)- have all sponsored or signed on to legislation to ban GE salmon in the US. Alaska’s state legislators are on the same page, and AYEA teens are behind them!
• Hunter Doan, Youth Trainer (Age 15, Seward): “If one of these GMO fish were to escape in to the wild, it would be disastrous to the ecosystem. GMO fish are bred to grow faster and eat more than wild fish. Since they eat so much, they would eat all of the wild salmon’s food. If House Bill 100 passes, it will prevent big fish farming companies from coming in and taking the jobs of local commercial fisherman.”

• Senate Bill 152 – The bill mandates legislative approval for mining operation that could affect water in or flowing into or over the Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve. It is intended to slow down or stall the Pebble Mine project, and for good reason—Bristol Bay is Alaska’s richest commercial fishery and “one of America’s most spectacular places.” The region’s pure waters, healthy habitat and breathtaking wilderness setting generate millions of dollars for the local economy, attract trophy salmon and trout anglers from all over the world, and support the centuries-old subsistence lifestyle of Alaska Natives—all jeopardized by mining operations
• Bill Sponsor Sen. French: “[I]t’s an important conversation starter. It’s important for them to know that they have people in the building who are willing to advance ideas that may not always get there. But you have to have the dialog, you have to have the debate, and so I’m proud to be a part of that.”
• Read more: Yes on 152 Juneau Empire Letter to the Editor by Mariah Savoie (Age 15, Anchorage)

• Senate Bill 27 – The bill would phase out the use, sale and manufacture of products containing toxic flame retardant chemicals (PBDEs, which are used in furniture and household appliances and may actually make fires more deadly). Though Alaska has very little chemical manufacturing in-state, these chemicals concentrate in the arctic through a process of bioaccumulation and Alaska ends up with disproportionately high amounts.
• Bill sponsor Sen. Wielechowski: “They knew what they were talking about. They had done a lot of research […] They asked me some very pointed questions about it, which showed they really had been studying it.”
• Rowan Heinemann (Age 17, Fairbanks) summed it up nicely: “We know the risks that PBDEs present, and now we have a chance to protect ourselves and future generations from these hazardous materials.”
• Read more: Ban PBDEs Fairbanks Daily News-Miner Letter to the Editor by Youth Trainer Emily Brease (Age 18, Healy)

This week’s SI cover is out and it features … Seals in the Pacific. Oh wait, that was Feb. 1958. My bad. twitter.com/si_vault/statu…

— Andy Gray (@si_vault) April 24, 2012

Gray’s tone betrayed a pretty common assumption: ‘Nature isn’t sports. That’s ridiculous!’

But SI, long the standard-bearer of American fandom, didn’t always feel that way. This was something I knew vaguely, having perused old-timey back issues as a kid, but I never tried to quantify it until today.

At its 1954 inception, Sports Illustrated recognized that getting out and interacting with nature could be sport—in fact, it represented some of our most hallowed sports traditions. That first year, three of the magazine’s 20 issues featured outdoor activities on the cover, including two wildlife-only covers (for our purposes, I counted anything involving hunting, fishing, hiking, birdwatching and general wilderness exploration as an ‘outdoors’ cover. Skiing, sailboat racing, bike racing and the like were left out since they do sometimes rate significant media coverage nowadays and are more structured…and because it’s my admittedly arbitrary system).

Throughout the 1950s, nature shared cover time with baseball, football and boxing. Between 1954 and 1959, SI averaged five nature covers per year, including nine in 1958. Standouts included this 1955 bird-watching cover, which could easily pass for a ‘wonders of biodiversity’ mural, a Chukar Partridge (“Six Pages of Game Birds in Color”) and the seals pictured above.

A TV-Driven Shift?

In the 1960s, things started to change. There were still three nature covers in 1963, but from that point on, the decade featured just two—one being 1965′s power boating feature, which I included with some hesitation only because it includes the line “the most luxurious fishing machine.” It seems that as television was becoming more ingrained in the American consciousness, and its signature sport—football—was exploding in popularity, our conception of sport took a distinctly couch-bound turn. More and more, the sports that SI was illustrating were highly structured activities performed by other people.

True, this cover DOES feature ducks...but not wildlife. SI covers featuring the outdoors have almost disappeared since the 1950s. (flickr | Sports Illustrated)

Children ages 3-12 spend 1% of their time outdoors, and 27 % of their time just watching TV. A recent report from Common Sense Media (PDF ) found that more than half of all American children between the ages of 0-8 now have access to one of the newer mobile devices at home, and nearly one-third have a TV in their bedroom. Overall, it indicates that ‘screen time’ is higher than ever for kids (as has been mentioned frequently here, that shift carries myriad consequences, from increased likelihood of poor eyesight to heart disease). Given all this, is it any wonder that televised stars like Brett Favre have replaced brook trout in the popular imagination?

Remembering Our Outdoor Heritage

What’s important to note is that outdoor recreation isn’t dead in America—not by a long shot. In fact, according to the 2012 Outdoor Recreation participation Topline Report, 2011 saw outdoor recreation (which includes fishing, hunting, birdwatching, et al.) among Americans at the highest participation level in the last five years.

And yet, to quote my colleague Miles Grant, “can you imagine Sports Illustrated ever putting wildlife on the cover today? Today, unless it takes place in designated arenas laden with ads that we drive to, it’s not a real sport.”

Sports Illustrated has seemingly confirmed that: since the year 1986, outdoors or nature have not been featured on the cover even once. It may be time to shift our idea of  recreation so that it includes both the Chicago Blackhawks and the Common Black-Hawk once again. If we return to thinking of the outdoors as ‘sports,’ it may help even more Americans see our natural places the way they once did—as the greatest stadiums we’ve ever had.

UPDATE:

After I bothered Andy Gray with a link to this post, he responded:

@MaxTGreenberg @SInow thought you did a great job with this story. I’ll show the boss. Maybe he’ll be up for a wildlife cover.

— Andy Gray (@si_vault) April 26, 2012

My sincerest thanks go to @si_vault for paying attention and running the ‘wildlife’ cover idea up the chain. Stay tuned—maybe someday soon we’ll see wild bison sharing cover space with the Buffalo Bills (though the latter might be more far-fetched).

It's important for parents to instill a love of the outdoors early in their kids' lives (flickr | dmhergert)

Unfortunately, many young children may not be getting the chance, per a new study published online by the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine:

“On average, we found that about half of preschool children in this nationally representative sample are not being taken outside to play daily by either of their parents.

For children who do not have a regular child care arrangement besides their parents (and therefore, likely do not have other structured venues or care providers to take them outside on a regular basis), 42 percent did not go outside daily.“

The authors added that the report “highlight(s) the considerable room for improvement in parent-supervised outdoor play opportunities for preschool-aged children, which could have numerous benefits for young children’s physical health and development [...] [i]n particular, efforts are needed to increase active outdoor play in children who are girls and nonwhite.”

It can be a struggle for busy modern families to carve out regular time to acclimate their kids to nature, but it’s important to try. That’s because kids whose parents don’t take them outside before they hit school age might already be on the path to a screen-bound, indoor childhood.

In recent years, despite more of an emphasis on schools doing their part to fight youth inactivity and obesity, the School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS), conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), found that that some schools may be cutting back on the time available for recess and PE in order to fit as much classroom time as possible into the school day. According to a 2007 survey and study from the Center on Education Policy,  20% of school districts reported had decreased time for recess—and by an average of 50 minutes per week—under No Child Left Behind. Students at high-minority, high-poverty or urban schools are especially recess-starved.

LiveScience’s Stephanie Pappas also points out that free time has declined over the last couple of decades: “in 1989, a survey by the National Association of Elementary School Principals found that 96 percent of elementary schools had at least one recess during the day. By 1999, only 70 percent of kindergarten classrooms had recess.”

Meanwhile, according to a recent report (PDF) compiled by Stephen Moss on behalf of the UK’s National Trust, the education and health of kids is suffering as they spend less time with nature.

Moss:

We all know the benefits being outdoors can bring, and as parents we want our children to spend more time outdoors than they do. But despite this overwhelming evidence and the different initiatives and schemes run by organisations across the UK, our kids are spending less and less time in the outdoors.

The time to act is now, whilst we still have a generation of parents and grandparents who grew up outdoors and can pass on their experience and whilst there remains a determination to do something positive in this area.

Children who play outside regularly are healthier, more creative in their play, show better concentration, sleep better and get along better with others. Sometimes ignored but no less important, research (PDF) has shown that outdoor activities like hiking or camping can positively influence a kid’s attitudes toward nature (and environmentally conscious behavior) when they grow up. It’s important for parents to instill a love of the outdoors when their kids are young—hoping that recess will take care of it a few years down the road may not be realistic.

You can read NWF’s Whole Child Report here for more on the benefits of outdoor play, use NWF’s Activity Finder to explore ideas for helping your kids connect with nature or read up on First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative. See our quick ‘Be Out There’ guide for parents if you’re not quite sure where to start, or browse the full “Outdoor Play for Every Day: A Parent’s Guide for Overcoming Common Obstacles to Kids and Outdoor Play.”

Giant squid eyes are huge, farsighted, and well-adapted to detecting predators (flickr | Jonathan Lampron)

Now, though, we know a little more.

According to a study published in Current Biology, the giant squid (and ‘colossal squid‘)’s huge eyes—which, aside from being the largest eyes of any known animal, are proportionally larger than those of other squid—have evolved for a special purpose:

…such giant eyes are unlikely to evolve for detecting mates or prey at long distance but are instead uniquely suited for detecting very large predators, such as sperm whales. [...] we predict that, below 600 m depth, (the eye) would allow detection of sperm whales at distances exceeding 120 m [...] we hypothesize that a well-prepared and powerful evasive response to hunting sperm whales may have driven the evolution of huge dimensions in both eyes and bodies of giant and colossal squid.

Lead author Dan-Eric Nilsson, a marine vision expert at the University of Lund in Sweden, and his team determined that giant squid are lousy at seeing things up close—they’re farsighted—and good at seeing big things off in the distance. This offers a unique and much-needed advantage when your primary day-to-day threat to life and limb (and limb, and limb, and limb…ha!) is a 60-ton predator with nature’s most powerful sonar system.

Duke Today:

But the boost in being able to sense contrast, which large eyes provide, is critical for detecting the low light differences of large, distant objects, the most important one being the bioluminescence stimulated by large animals such as approaching sperm whales, [report contributor and Duke biologist Sonke Johnsen] said.

Giant squid washed ashore in Norway, 1954 (flickr | NTNU-Vitenskapsmuseet)

The team realized that sperm whales dive and swim continuously while emitting sonar to ping the squid. The cephalopods are deaf to the sonar, but the whale’s wake triggers small organisms like plankton to produce light. Based on the design of the squid’s eye, the animal could see this light, though contrast is low, over “freakishly long distances,” about 120 meters — the length of an American football field, Johnsen said.

We all know that Duke basketball is evil and lame, but Duke biology is evidently quite useful.

The giant squid’s massive eyes are (presumably) the latest stage in an epic arms race against sperm whales—a specific, complex adaptation that justifies their tremendous metabolic expenditure. The big eyes allow squid to spot sperm whales by their glowing wake from about 390 feet away, through murky expanses of deep ocean water, and escape—despite the predator’s sonar and speed.

For more on ocean creatures, see Kevin Coyle’s post from last year about animals’ various methods of swimming or my post about the Top 5 Real Sea Serpents (including the giant squid). You can also check out an article about sperm whales and the threat posed to them after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Just in time for National Wildlife Week, National Wildlife Federation’s Eco-Schools USA program has officially launched a new Biodiversity pathway to help schools explore their own grounds and communities and introduce their students to relationships within and across ecosystems as part of their study of the environment at large.

The pathway offers teachers and the students the tools to assess and improve biodiversity—the variety of life and its manifold relationships in small- and large-scale ecosystems–around them as an engaging complement to classroom science instruction.

Savannah Country Day School (Laura Hickey)

Hands-on biodiversity learning doesn’t only provide a greater appreciation for life’s diversity—like many environmental literacy themes, it can broaden science education too.

A 2005 study (PDF) in Temple, TX, schools found science achievement of students who participated in a hands-on gardening program was higher than for standard science classes. A 2010 study in the International Journal of Science Education found that most students who become interested in science do so during middle school or earlier and attribute their interest to some education-related science experience, so programs like Schoolyard Habitats—and the new Biodiversity pathway–are especially vital in building a solid baseline.

Why Should We Care about Biodiversity?

Biodiversity is extremely important to people and to the health of our natural ecosystems. Here are just some of the reasons, from our online Biodiversity pathway resources:

• Biodiversity allows us to live healthy and happy lives. It provides us with a wide array of foods, fibers and other materials and it supports the economy.
• Without a diversity of pollinators, plants, and soils, we would have little variety in our diets.
• Most medical discoveries to cure diseases and lengthen life spans were made because of research into plant and animal biology and genetics. Every time a species goes extinct or genetic diversity is lost, we lose an opportunity to find out if it could have provided a new vaccine or drug.
• Biodiversity is an important part of the ecological services that make life livable on Earth. They include everything from cleaning water and absorbing chemicals, which wetlands do, to providing oxygen for us to breathe—one of the many things that plants do for people.
• Biodiversity allows ecosystems to adjust to disturbances such as extreme fires and floods. In a forest with 20 species of reptiles, if one becomes extinct the others will likely adapt to fill the role left vacant. But if the forest had only one reptile species, there can be no adaptation.
• Genetic diversity prevents diseases and helps species adjust to changes in their environment.
• Diversity enriches our lives simply by existing. There are few things as beautiful, wonderful and inspiring as the diversity of life on Earth.

To find out how to become an Eco-School, visit our website. Learn more about Biodiversity, including extinction threats facing many species here. You can also read an article from National Wildlife Magazine about homegrown biodiversity through gardening or use the Biodiversity Audit (PDF) to help assess the biodiversity of the area surrounding your school.

Learn more about how you can celebrate EXTRA-ordinary species in your community and across the country during this year’s National Wildlife Week, March 19-25 >>

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Human activity isn’t changing the climate…CO2 is harmless!…People can’t change the weather…A scientist will say anything if you pay them.”

Then, the coup de grace: “Of course it’s true. I learned it in school.”

Climate Reality is referring to the coal, oil and auto industry-funded Heartland Institute’s plan to “change the science taught in our public schools” by way of an under-development curriculum that purports to teach that climate change is scientifically “controversial.” Climate Reality asks: “Is the truth really for sale?” NWF and other organizations have posed similar questions in the last few weeks, only to be bombarded with cease-and-desist letters and vague threats.

To the untrained eye, Heartland is spitting in the wind. After all, American education is getting greener all the time. Witness the State Board of the Maryland Department of Education’s landmark new policy requiring high school students in the state to attain a basic level of environmental literacy before graduation, or the inclusion of environmental education provisions in an amendment to the reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), marking the first time environmental education has been formally included in federal K-12 education policy. More significant still are the purely elective efforts, evidenced by an increase in environmental science Advanced Placement exams and ‘greening’ recognition across geographical and political lines (34 states have now opted in to the U.S. Green Ribbon Schools Award, and half of them have Republican governors and are generally viewed as ‘red’).

But Heartland didn’t get where it is by scrapping for half measures or lost causes. The “climate controversy” plan is actually incredibly canny—and highly cynical. Heartland senses that the decision-makers of generations to come are getting informed and chooses to exploit that awakening: sowing doubt under the pretense that more information, no matter the source, necessarily means a fuller understanding.

Basically, just as schools, teachers and students alike are starting to seek a clearer picture of how the world works and how they affect it, contrarian shysters are scrambling to smear the whole thing with Vaseline.

NWF cares about this issue. We support federal environmental education programs, many of which are in jeopardy. We are the U.S. host for the prestigious Eco-Schools program, which certifies schools that green their physical structures and curricula. We can use your help in making sure that America’s environmental education renaissance doesn’t drown in misinformation posing as legitimate “curriculum.”

If you’d like to help America’s kids learn accurate, balanced environmental science, ask Congress to pass the No Child Left Inside Act, a bill to help states develop stronger K-12 environmental literacy programs.

For more information on environmental education, check out Eco-Schools USA’s Climate Change pathway on incorporating global warming education into the curriculum in a practical and instructive way. You can also see the Guidelines for Excellence developed by the North American Association for Environmental Education or the reworked  Framework for K-12 Science Education, from the National Academies’ Board on Science Education.

Inside, there was a cease-and-desist letter from the Heartland Institute focusing on a recent post I did for Wildlife Promise.

The letter “respectfully demand(ed)” that I remove links and references to documents obtained by ThinkProgress and DeSmogBlog that circulated widely last week and appeared to lay bare the inner workings of a think tank that has long sought to undermine climate science (just how does one respond to a ‘respectful demand,’ anyway? Magnanimous acquiescence?).

Among the documents I referenced: a memo indicating that Heartland was paying to develop a curriculum for K-12 schools intended to paint global warming as “a major scientific controversy” rather than the systematically-reached conclusion of decades of peer review and careful research.  This and other details were reported on by the New York Times, the Washington Post, many other major outlets and countless blogs, but NWF has reached out to several print journalists who say they have not received letters. What made us so special? (Wait; was this a Valentine of sorts?)

In any case, we didn’t want mainstream press to feel left out, so we sent it to them, too, and we posted it on our Media Center.

Since the original leak, Heartland has issued a statement claiming the strategy memo is a fake, but the budget documents—including the 2012 fundraising plan I quoted—have not been disputed, and therefore neither has the fact that part of their strategy is to push marginal ideas including a nonexistent “major controversy” about climate science.

In fact, the Associated Press reported that David Wojick, the proposed curriculum designer named in the documents, confirmed “the document was accurate about his project to put curriculum materials in schools that promote climate skepticism.”

The Heartland Institute and its funders are not waging the war on environmental literacy by themselves. We never said they were. But if, as they claim, the strategy memo “does not express Heartland’s goals, plans, or tactics,” why don’t they tell us what they are all about, and give us their word that secret climate agitprop directed at kids is not part of their M.O.? (you know, we’d even accept it in the form of a FedEx package).

Dear Heartland: we love your earth-friendly logo, but we have a difference of opinion. NWF won’t stop relaying information in the public domain, and we won’t back down in the broader fight on behalf of environmental education and true ‘sound science.’ Regardless of the veracity of any one document, we need to examine the tactics consistently used by the extreme right to keep solid science out of America’s K-12 classrooms. And right now, you’re the face of that problem.

School wouldn't be worth a whole lot if we taught every fringe 'controversy.' (flickr | sidewalk flying)

Case in point: ThinkProgress Green says it has acquired documents that show the partly Koch and ExxonMobil-funded Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank, is working on developing a curriculum for K-12 schools intended to paint global warming as “a major scientific controversy” rather than the systematically-reached  conclusion of decades of peer review and careful research. (Update: the Heartland Institute has since issued an advisory claiming that the documents are ‘fake and stolen.’ Stay tuned.)

The curriculum will be developed by Dr. David E. Wojick, who has worked as a consultant for multiple coal interests and is an old hand at ‘making the case for uncertainty’ in climate science:

Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy“), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).

This project would apparently cost about $100,000—chump change compared to the $8 million Koch Industries spent lobbying Congress in 2011. I guess even veterans of the science obfuscation game learn new tricks sometimes (though not all of ‘em work out).

Sadly, this isn’t a new wrinkle. Last year, a libertarian school board member pressured California’s Los Alamitos Unified School District to make sure a new environmental science class includes “multiple perspectives” on climate—namely, those that accuse scientists of being dogmatic worrywarts—and education experts (ahem) like Rush Limbaugh and Jim Hoft have made a habit of excoriating the so-called ‘junk science’ that informs environmental education in between reports on President Obama’s birth certificate.

These measures try to paint educators as, at best, irresponsible—at worst, bent on keeping kids from the truth. The implication that some contrarian curriculum is all it takes to set things right only adds insult to injury, and at a time when many students are struggling.

Any scientist would tell you that there’s a high bar for what is conclusive. But when the preponderance of legitimate climate scientists confirm that global warming is manmade and a threat to life on earth, can the remainder even be considered capable of controversy? Aren’t they more like the random guy on the metro with a theory about the moon landing being a hoax? Should we teach that one too?

(As an aside: I definitely do plan on picking up a ‘Teach the Controversy’ t-shirt soon.)

If you’d like to help America’s kids learn accurate, balanced environmental science, ask Congress to pass the No Child Left Inside Act, a bill to help states develop stronger K-12 environmental literacy programs.

For more information on environmental education, check out Eco-Schools USA’s Climate Change pathway on incorporating global warming education into the curriculum in a practical and instructive way. You can also see the Guidelines for Excellence developed by the North American Association for Environmental Education or the reworked  Framework for K-12 Science Education, from the National Academies’ Board on Science Education.