#disablefield.news

[thedisablednaturalist]

Great news for the internet archive!

The Internet Archive just became an official U.S. federal library

The new status means archive users gain access to a trove of government documents.

Hopefully this will allow the archive more security against cyber attacks as well as more legitimacy legally.

[thedisablednaturalist]

THEYVE STARTED DEPLOYING MY BABIES!!!

Prince William County, partners release mussels into local waterways to monitor stream health

Prince William County’s Department of Public Works, Environmental Management Division, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Northern V

This is the project I worked heavily on before leaving for the federal government. I was the one to pick the deployment locations as well as the first species (Eastern Elliptio/ Elliptio complanata). If this is successful, then they'll be able to reintroduce my beloved brook floaters (Alasmidonta varicosa) to Prince William County streams!

This project is super important to me and I hope it is successful, having a healthy population of mussels would do so much for cleaning up the urban streams in PWC. I'm so proud of my colleagues for continuing this project after I left for the federal government. I miss working there so much! I'm so happy this project has moved into deployment, I might cry.

[thedisablednaturalist]

The new age verification bullshit will affect disabled people in many ways including:

- falsely flag people whose disabilities/medical conditions make them look "younger"

- Face scanning may not work on people with facial differences

- many disabled people don't have an ID like a drivers license. I think in the UK there's a specific ID for disabled people but I'm not sure. In the states you would have to have a realID or passport which isn't that easy to get.

- Lots of neurodivergent people and those with developmental disabilities have "childish" interests that may flag them as children (not all neurodivergent people but a significant portion)

There's probably a lot more but this is off the top of my head. In general this is a huge privacy and censorship issue and is quickly coming to the US and the rest of the world with YouTube's recent announcement about using AI to categorize users by age based on their content preferences. Hopefully the EU's data protection laws will keep their citizens safe, but for the rest of us... it's not looking good

[thedisablednaturalist]

They shut down the fucking NPS training centers. One of my dreams was to get training at Mathers (I believe you can sometimes pay for classes there especially if you are a public servant and can justify your need, they had one that's all about crawfish!!). They also had specialized training on freshwater mussels, which is CRITICAL for mussel conservation, as mussel ID is notoriously hard. The department of interior thinks virtual training can replace in person training, which it absolutely cannot. Many of these skills need to be honed in person. They are also shutting down the one in Arizona, Albright. This is going to have devastating effects on American conservation efforts.

National Park Service ranger training centers shut down without warning

When you roll into a national park in your RV, you expect friendly ranger faces, well‑maintained trails, and staff who know their stuff. Muc

[thedisablednaturalist]

'This Would Have Serious, Real-World Impacts.' Why the EPA's Rule Change on Water Protections Would Be a Disaster for Fish and Wildlife

Conservationists are sounding the alarm about the EPA's proposal to strip Clean Water Act protections from many of our streams and wetlands.

we shouldn't use "common sense" for environmental laws! They shouldn't be based on what the general public understands about science because they aren't scientists! Many, if not most, streams do not flow continuously and are still extremely important parts of the general ecosystem! Also fucking with them can lead to flooding and erosion, which I have seen first hand from people messing with an ephemeral/intermittent stream! Their neighbors yard flooded! Also, this completely fucks over wetlands by reducing the amount that are protected. 80% of mapped wetlands would lose protections, which is devastating as most are threatened already.

The comment period is still open, please please respond to it. We can't let this happen. Comment here:

https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/COE_FRDOC_0001-1000

[thedisablednaturalist]

EPA dissolves union contract, AFGE says

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has unilaterally dissolved a collective bargaining agreement with members of the union that repres

There's no fucking way this is legal. So we have no union, no contract, and it's illegal for us to strike. So we have no rights.

[thedisablednaturalist]

Trump administration says sign language services 'intrude' on Trump's ability to control his image

The Trump administration argues that providing real-time American Sign Language interpretation for events like White House press briefings w

if he wants to "control" what is presented maybe he should just learn ASL and do the interpretation himself then!