A POLITE NAME FOR FACISM

Authoritarianism advances as world battles the pandemic


LONDON (AP) — Here’s some of what happened while the world was distracted by the coronavirus: Hungary banned the public depiction of homosexuality. China shut Hong Kong’s last pro-democracy newspaper. Brazil’s government extolled dictatorship. And Belarus hijacked a passenger plane to arrest a journalist.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

COVID-19 has absorbed the world’s energies and isolated countries from one another, which may have accelerated the creep of authoritarianism and extremism across the globe, some researchers and activists believe.


“COVID is a dictator’s dream opportunity,” said Theary Seng, a Cambodian-American human rights lawyer who has been indicted on charges including treason in the ostensibly democratic southeast Asian nation, where Prime Minister Hun Sen has been in power for more than three decades.

Human Rights Watch accuses Cambodia’s government of using the pandemic as cover to imprison political opponents without due process. Scores have been indicted and face mass trials.

When it comes to government opposition, “the fear of COVID, on its own and as a political weapon, has substantially restricted mobility for a gathering or movement to take shape,” Seng said.

The biggest global public health emergency in a century has handed power to government authorities and restricted life for billions of people.

Luke Cooper, a London School of Economics researcher and author of the book “Authoritarian Contagion,” said the vast economic, health and social resources poured into fighting the pandemic mean “the state is back as a force to manage society and to deliver public goods.”

Restrictions on civil liberties or political opponents have been stepped up during the pandemic on several continents.

For a decade in Hungary, conservative nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban has curtailed media and judicial freedom, criticized multiculturalism and attacked Muslim migrants as a threat to Europe’s Christian identity.

During the pandemic, Orban’s government brought in an emergency powers bill allowing it to implement resolutions without parliamentary approval -- effectively a license to rule by decree. In June, it passed a law prohibiting the sharing of content portraying homosexuality or sex reassignment with anyone under 18. The government claims the purpose is to protect children from pedophiles, but it effectively outlawed discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools and the media.

Poland’s conservative government has chipped away at the rights of women and gay people. A ruling last year by a government-controlled court that imposed a near-total ban on abortion triggered a wave of protests that defied a ban on mass gatherings during the virus outbreak.

In India, the world’s biggest democracy, populist Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been accused of trying to silence voices critical of his administration’s response to a brutal pandemic wave that tore through the country in April and May. His government has arrested journalists and ordered Twitter to remove posts that criticized its handling of the outbreak after introducing sweeping regulations that give it more power to police online content.

Even before the pandemic, Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party was accused by opponents of squashing dissent and introducing policies aimed at refashioning a multifaith democracy into a Hindu nation that discriminates against Muslims and other minorities.

In Russia, the government of President Vladimir Putin has used the pandemic as its latest excuse to arrest opposition figures. Associates of jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny have been subjected to house arrest and charges that the mass protests against his arrest violated regulations on mass gatherings.

In neighboring Belarus, authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko extended his quarter-century iron grip on power by winning an August 2020 election that the opposition -- and many Western countries -- said was rigged. The huge protests that erupted were met with tear gas, rubber bullets and mass arrests.

Then, in May, a Ryanair plane flying from Athens to Vilnius was forced to land in the Belarusian capital of Minsk after the crew was told of an alleged threat. Opposition journalist Raman Pratasevic, a passenger, was taken off the plane along with his girlfriend and arrested.

Western nations called the forced diversion a brazen hijacking and slapped sanctions on Belarus, but those seem unlikely to induce Lukashenko to change his ways and underscore the weakness of democracies in confronting hardline regimes. Hungary’s acts have drawn sharp words from fellow European Union leaders, but the 27-nation bloc has no unified response to restrictive regimes like those in Hungary or Poland.

Even before COVID-19 came along, extremism was on the march.

“Over the last 15 years, authoritarian politics has replicated all over the world,” Cooper said.

“Democracy feels very fragile. Democracy doesn’t have a clear vision for what it’s trying to do in the 21st century.”

The 2008 global financial crisis, which saw governments pump billions into teetering banks, shook confidence in the Western world order. And the years of recession and government austerity that followed boosted populism in Europe and North America.

In China, authorities saw the 2008 economic crash as evidence that they, and not the world’s democracies, were on the right path.

Historian Rana Mitter, director of the University of Oxford China Center, said the crisis persuaded China’s communist government that “the West no longer had lessons to teach them.” Since then, Beijing has increasingly flexed China’s economic muscle abroad while cracking down on opposition inside its borders.

In recent years, hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uyghurs have been confined in re-education camps in China’s western Xinjiang region, where activists and former detainees accuse authorities of imposing forced labor, systematic forced birth control and torture. Beijing instead characterizes the camps as vocational training centers.

Beijing also has tightened control on Hong Kong, stifling dissent in the former British colony. Protesters, publishers and journalists critical of Beijing have been jailed and the last remaining pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily, stopped publishing in June after the arrest of its top editors and executives.

When the coronavirus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, authorities responded firmly -- though far from transparently -- with draconian lockdowns that got the virus in check.

Mitter said the pandemic has cemented a view -- among many ordinary Chinese, as well as the country’s leaders -- “that something had gone very wrong in terms of the way in which the democratic world had dealt with the virus, and something had gone right in China.”

“That is now being used very much as a lesson, not just about the pandemic, but about the virtues of China’s system as opposed to the systems of liberal countries,” he said.

Last year, curfews and travel restrictions also became commonplace across Europe. People in France needed to show a signed declaration to travel more than 1 kilometer (just over a half-mile) from home. And Britons were banned by law from going on vacation abroad, while some attendees at a London vigil for a murdered woman were arrested for gathering illegally.

British lawmakers have expressed concern about the scope of the Conservative government’s emergency powers, many passed without debate in Parliament.

“Since March 2020, the government has introduced a large volume of new legislation, much of it transforming everyday life and introducing unprecedented restrictions on ordinary activities,” said Ann Taylor, an opposition Labour Party politician who chairs the House of Lords Constitution Committee. “Yet parliamentary oversight of these significant policy decisions has been extremely limited.”

Politicians and intelligence agencies in the West also have warned of the threat from coronavirus conspiracy theories that dovetail with existing extremist narratives. Many countries have seen large anti-lockdown, anti-mask, anti-vaccine protests attended by a mix of the far right, the far left and assorted conspiracists.

The British government has warned of “extremists exploiting the crisis to sow division and undermine the social fabric of our country,” with different hate groups variously blaming Muslims, Jews and 5G phone technology for the pandemic.

But there are signs of fighting back. The pandemic also has boosted trust in scientists and spurred demands for more accountable political leadership.

In Hungary, which has one of the world’s highest per-capita coronavirus death rates, there is growing opposition both to the government’s pandemic policies and to its wider authoritarian thrust, and thousands have taken to the streets in support of academic freedom and LGBT rights. With an election due in 2022, a six-party opposition coalition has united to try to unseat Orban’s Fidesz party.

Both extremism and resistance can be seen in Brazil, where the far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has expressed nostalgia for the country’s two-decade military dictatorship and last year attended protests against the country’s courts and Congress. He dismissed the virus as a “little flu,” cast doubt on the effectiveness of vaccines and opposed social and economic restrictions.

Renato Meirelles, director of Brazilian polling company Locomotive Institute, said authoritarianism had advanced through “a strategy of fake news and attacks on factual truth.” “The next step will be questioning the electronic vote and, as such, the result of the next election,” he said.

Bolsonaro has so far been held in check by Brazil’s institutions, especially the Supreme Court, which stopped him from preventing states and cities from implementing restrictions to curb COVID-19 and has ordered an inquiry into the government’s pandemic response. And protests have finally spilled out onto the streets. Twice over the past month, demonstrators marched in dozens of cities across the country.

“I’m here to fight for the rights of those in need, for the rights of my children, for my right to live, to have vaccines for all,” said Claudia Maria, a protester in Rio de Janeiro.

In the United States, President Joe Biden has veered away from the populism of Donald Trump, but a Republican Party radicalized by the former president’s supporters has every chance of winning power again.

Cooper, of the LSE, said the authoritarian tide was unlikely to recede soon.

“This is a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism that’s going to last decades,” he said.

___

Associated Press Writers Jim Heintz in Moscow, Justin Spike in Budapest, David Biller in Rio de Janeiro, Christopher Bodeen in Beijing, Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi and Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed.

Jill Lawless, The Associated Press

Spreading wildlife disease threatens deer, elk — and maybe humans, new research says

EDMONTON — The continuing spread of a fatal wildlife disease in Alberta and Saskatchewan has a federal agency recommending a deer cull across a wide swath of the Prairies.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

And soon-to-be-published research on chronic wasting disease has raised new fears about whether the illness could infect humans.

"I would say this question was answered with 'yes,'" said Hermann Schaetzl, a veterinary scientist at the University of Calgary.

Schaetzl's work was discussed in a recent report from the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, which advises the federal government on agriculture policy. Earlier this month, the institute concluded that in addition to human health concerns, the disease's spread over the last decade threatens Western Canada's agriculture, wildlife and food security.

"It's continuing to increase in its spread and the speed of its spread," said Ted Bilyea, the institute's strategy officer.

Chronic wasting disease affects animals such as deer, caribou, moose and elk, attacking nervous systems with universally fatal results. Like mad cow disease or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, it is caused by prions — misshapen proteins that can persist in the environment for up to a decade, able to transfer their shape to healthy proteins.

It was first found in Canada in 1996. Since then, it has appeared in deer and elk in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Quebec.

In 2019, Alberta found 11 per cent of animals submitted by hunters tested positive, up from seven per cent in previous years. It was also found in moose for the first time.

Maps in the report show that in 2008 the disease was limited to isolated outbreaks in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Now, it's considered well-established throughout Alberta's southeast quarter and Saskatchewan's southern half.

The report also discussed an experiment conducted on macaque monkeys, considered the closest animal analog to humans.

In 2006, German scientists began feeding macaques with meat from animals infected with the disease. Because it can take years for the disease to show, the monkeys weren't euthanized and tested until two years ago.

The first tests were ambiguous. But Schaetzl, who helped conduct confirmatory tests, said it became clear the monkeys had developed low-level infections.

"The more we did, the more we could confirm the macaques were infected."

Although Schaetzl's work is still being peer-reviewed, it has been presented in conferences and is widely discussed among disease experts.

"I was shocked when we first learned of the results," said Neil Cashman, a leading prion expert at the University of British Columbia. "It's absolutely confirmative that this happened — you could give macaques a prion disease through oral consumption of contaminated meat."

Because the disease is so new and takes so long to develop, Cashman said there could already be people suffering from a human form of chronic wasting disease.

"(For) many people with a spinal cord syndrome, it wouldn't even occur to the treating neurologist that this could be a prion disease," he said. "It's going to take some education and alertness to even think of the diagnosis."

To keep tainted meat out of the food supply, Saskatchewan and Alberta require deer and elk farmers to test every animal that dies on their farms, including slaughtered animals. If the disease is found on an Alberta farm, the herd is depopulated and the farmer is prohibited from restocking with animals susceptible to it.

There have been no cases of cattle catching the disease from wild animals.

"It's easy to go down a doomsday scenario but I don't think we're there yet," said Neil Lehman, Alberta's provincial veterinarian. "I think it's low-risk."

He points out macaques may be close to humans, but they're still a different species.

Still, Bilyea warns chronic wasting disease threatens Alberta's wildlife. It's already shrinking Montana deer herds.

It also threatens hunters — especially those who depend on game to fill the freezer. The report warns of dire consequences if the disease gets into caribou, a threatened species in the mountains and a staple for many northern First Nations.

"The southern range (of caribou) is pretty much the northern range for our survey," Bilyea said. "If (prions) pass through that, then we have a genuine food security problem for our northern people."

The report's first recommendation is the creation of a deer-depopulated buffer zone to separate caribou range from infected animals.

"We don't have any buffer zone," said Bilyea. "It's not a very pleasant idea, but this is not a very pleasant topic."

Alberta has previously tried deer culls in an effort to keep the disease confined to Saskatchewan. But Lehman said it might be time to try again.

"It's worth considering," he said. "I think it's justified."

Chronic wasting disease also threatens the reputation of Canadian agriculture.

A 2003 outbreak of mad cow disease in northern Alberta damaged Canadian food exports for years. Norway has already passed regulations prohibiting the import of Canadian hay and straw from jurisdictions with chronic wasting disease.

Cashman said he no longer eats deer or elk.

"I hear the alarm bells going off," he said.

"I would have expected a human case to emerge in the U.S. before Canada. But on the weight of evidence, I think it's not only not impossible, it's kind of expected at this point."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 15, 2021.

— Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at @row1960

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

NFLD

Food security was a burning issue a century ago

On the evening of Nov. 1, 1937, hundreds of delegates and other residents from all along the west coast packed a hall in Port au Port to hear speeches during the region’s first ever co-operative conference.

Among those giving “stirring addresses,” writes a Western Star correspondent, was Rev. Oliver Jackson, superintendent of missions for the United Church, who happened to be in the district.

Jackson was one of the earliest boosters of the co-operative movement, and likely had a spring in his step as he left that Monday night meeting.

Less than 48 hours later, he was dead — drowned after falling overboard in rough seas moments after leaving the tiny south coast community of West Point.

A farewell party watched in horror from the shore as his protégé, student missionary Wallace Harris, also perished while trying to rescue him.

Their small open boat, the Mitzpah, was later found wrecked on nearby rocks.

Jackson had spent the better part of 25 years visiting isolated outports across Newfoundland, encouraging education and self-sufficiency among the poor population. He had an energetic and engaging personality, and was welcomed openly by most he met. But he didn’t hesitate to ruffle a few feathers, calling to task business and political leaders who he felt were resisting the need for change.

In his short book “Apostle of the Outports,” a tribute to his predecessor, Max Dawe describes how Jackson, who first arrived in Newfoundland from Wales as a young Methodist missionary in 1911, became increasingly passionate about the economic state of the population.

“The dreadful conditions under which so many of the Newfoundland people have been living for years because of economic impoverishment and isolation impressed themselves upon his sensitive soul more and more as the years went by, so that he who began his work as friend and counsellor of youth, now became an ardent champion of the rights of the common people,” Dawe wrote.

To quote from the reverend’s own log: “How has it come to pass in Newfoundland that the producers all around her coast, in schooners or on land, fishermen, sailors, small farmers or loggers, are now dumb slave of a truck system which deprives them of their economic freedom? They are afraid to speak out because to do so would mean suffering for their families, but a hot sense of injustice can be felt and a good deal of ominous grumbling heard among the men themselves.”

Jackson wrote several columns and articles about farming — a popular one was titled “Our Friend the Pig” — and inspired many young people to take up the torch along the way.

His ministry 100 years ago paints an interesting parallel to today’s explosion of interest in community gardens and food self-sufficiency.

Then, like now, it was external forces that threatened the livelihood of communities. Today’s challenges are more global and in some ways more ominous — climate change, the factory food system — but in both cases it took a grassroots movement to exact change.

As retired religious studies professor Hans Rollmann points out, Jackson wasn’t the first local clergyman to promote horticulture.

The Moravian missionaries, who settled in Inuit territory in the 1700s, managed to supplement their diet and that of the locals with fresh vegetables.

“Determined to succeed with horticulture, the Moravians developed gardening methods best suited for a climate such as Labrador,” Rollmann wrote in one of his regular Telegram columns several years ago. “Even in Hebron, there were eventually thriving gardens, and in Ramah, north of Hebron, they built a greenhouse.”

Rollmann also highlights the efforts of Bishop Ronald MacDonald — yes, his real name — of Harbour Grace, “a progressive Roman Catholic (and) an ardent proponent of gardening and agriculture.”

MacDonald was essentially the grandfather of home-grown agricultural research. He was appointed by the government in 1899 to lead a commission to look into the matter. His recommendations? The creation of a ministry of agriculture and industries, division of Newfoundland into agricultural districts, and establishment of agricultural colleges, farming schools, model farms and experimental stations.

MacDonald and his commissioners felt the government could provide more than just guidance.

Said Rollmann: “Support of agriculture by the government, they thought, was not confined to practical know-how but had a more far-reaching ethical intent, in that it was to awaken a spirit of initiative, independence and self-help throughout Newfoundland and Labrador.”

It was, perhaps, their deep faith that helped religious pioneers such as MacDonald and Jackson see great potential where countless other visitors to Newfoundland saw nothing but rocks and barrens.

As Jackson put it, "We have fine natural resources in our fisheries and our minerals, and I have found deep valleys, broad rivers, timber and grassland and good soil. Let us go out and defy the depression. Let us have faith in our country's resources, in ourselves, in God. Let us prove our mettle by digging deeper into the soil."

Peter Jackson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Telegram

The Scientist Using Fire to Save Orchids From Extinction

Lucy Sherriff 17 hrs ago


On a hot, humid Maryland afternoon in August 2017, Deborah Landau nervously scanned a clearing for signs of life. Clad in tick-proof clothing from head to toe—uncomfortable in this weather but necessary as Landau had twice before contracted Lyme disease—she had been waiting almost a year for this moment.

The 53-year-old conservation ecologist for The Nature Conservancy who specializes in rare plant species had taken a huge risk the previous year. She had burned the entire area, in the hope of saving the Oxypolis canbyi plant, also known as Canby’s dropwort. There’s only one location in Maryland where this white-flowering plant grows: in the Delmarva Bay, an area of ephemeral wetlands that are wet in the fall and winter, and prairie-like and dry in the summer and spring.

“This plant is super rare, very imperiled,” said Landau. “I’ve spent many years opening this wetland back up and the population increased, but it was still struggling.”

Landau lives and breathes plants, and her work at the conservancy plays a vital role in keeping some of the country’s rarest flora alive. Through controlled burns, careful and painstaking monitoring, and warding off would-be poachers, Landau is responsible for not only ensuring they stay alive—but that they thrive. We think of orchids as tropical plants, but a number are found right here in the U.S., and some of the world’s rarest are located in a preserve in Maryland. Just Landau and a small team of dedicated conservationists and volunteers are all that stand between these plants and extinction.

Months before Landau’s humid August visit, she had been at the very same site, drip torch in hand, ready to send fire dancing across the land in front of her.

In the past, the wetlands would have had fires sweeping through them, keeping them open for these flowers to grow. But a history of stringent fire measures, thanks to a misunderstanding of the role fire plays in the ecosystem, has meant that if a wildfire does start naturally, the flames are extinguished before they can burn as nature intended. That has allowed trees and long grasses to take over, creating too much shade for the flowers to thrive. After intense lobbying, The Nature Conservancy was granted permission to carry out a burn in order to save the Canby’s dropwort species.

“It took years and years to get the approval and to figure out how to burn this site in an ecologically sensitive way,” Landau said.

She and her team came up with a plan so that only the wetland would burn. They needed a day when it had rained the day before so that the forest was wet and unlikely to burn. That would allow fire to spread through the grasses of the wetland without causing unintended harm to the forest. When a day with optimal conditions arrived, Landau and her team suited up in fire-proof gear and set the ground ablaze. They used the transition from grass to shady forest as a natural fire break and minimized how much fuel they used in such an ecologically sensitive area.

As Landau and her team lit up the drip torches, the reality of what was about to unfold truly took shape. Sitting in the middle of the meadow were three Canby’s dropwort plants. Sending a wall of flames racing across the landscape, even after a day of rain, came with real risks to the very plants Landau was trying to save from extinction.

“I was terrified when we were doing it,” she said. “I could’ve killed the entire Maryland population.”

But knowing the fire might be their only salvation had led the team to this point, and so the burn began.“All it took was three lines of ignition, and the wetland just wanted to burn, it was just screaming fire-adapted, the way these fuels carried was so beautiful,” Landau said, recalling the day

kinjavideo-189401

After years of planning, the burn was over in just 45 minutes. “It was almost anti-climactic, after all those years of planning,” she laughed.

As soon as the fire was out, Landau ran to the patch where they had been and put her hand on the ground.

“The soil was actually still damp, even though it had burned,” she said. “The seeds were protected.”

But Landau had to wait nine months to see if the plants grew back and flowered, a metric of whether the fire had done its job. The very goal of the burn was to clear the area, and Landau had an idea that the plant may thrive in fire-treated soil.

“It was very stressful,” she recalled. “I had a lot of second-guessing. You know, maybe I shouldn’t, maybe this is the wrong thing. Maybe I should go and wet the area first. But thinking it through. We knew it was a fire adaptive plant. We knew that this is probably why the plant was there in the first place, because historically there had been fires in the area and naturally it wouldn’t have gotten a little sprinkling of water beforehand. So we just did hands off. And we burned it.”

That August day Landau finally returned to the burn site to carry out her survey is ingrained in her memory. To the untrained eye, the field looked like any other grassy forest opening. But to Landau, who scanned the landscape feverishly for signs of the telltale white almond blooming flowers, it was the site of something spectacular. She immediately spotted the sprinkling of snow in the middle of the wetland, visibly larger than the previous year—and a surefire sign that her risky burn had worked.

“There’s no counting needed,” she said. “I counted, but I didn’t have to. It was quite an emotional moment. As a woman in the field I try not to be emotional, and I won’t but yes, oh, it’s, yeah, it absolutely was so gratifying.”

Before the burn, there were just three plants. As of 2021, there are around 3,000 Oxypolis canbyi plants.

“I literally spent five years planning that burn, and being told by our managers that you can’t burn this. And it worked. ... It’s really just nature saying ‘you did the right thing.’ It really brings home the importance of this ecological restoration.”

The Nature Conservancy owns around 30,000 acres in Maryland, and Landau is responsible for overseeing the plant species, running the program, and monitoring plants of interest. An integral part of Landau’s work is controlled burns, which are increasingly used by conservation organizations and land managers as public and scientific opinion towards fire as a management tool shifts.

Last year, Landau and her team had the most successful burn season they’d ever had. When her team isn’t lighting fires, though, Landau is busy planning them by updating maps, setting objectives based on previous burns, and drafting burn plans.

A lot goes into organizing a burn like the one she carried out last August, and Landau is responsible for making sure everything goes according to plan. Measurements of the conservancy’s land have to be precise, and every forest edge, grassy plain, and watershed must be documented in order to plan out burn areas. Getting it wrong could mean whole regions go up in flames. It’s also imperative that Landau has the locations of the very plants she’s trying to save, so she can track their progress and develop conservation plans appropriate to the species.

© Photo: Chase McLean A survey in the field looking at Canby’s dropwort (Oxypolis canbyi).

“We need to get approval from a lot of different levels,” she said, “and we have to make calls to adjacent landowners to let them know there’ll be a burn, figure out whether we need to work with partners as sometimes our borders are adjacent to state or private land.”

It’s also important she has coordinates in hand before she heads out into the field. There’s rarely any signal in the areas she monitors, and so she creates maps in the office and uploads them to her phone prior to setting out. It’s a big change from her early work when she was in her 20s when, Landau said, she spent a lot of time “getting lost” in the field. “I would have these big topography maps and roll them out in the field and try to understand where I was with my compass,” she recalled.

Landau is often required to spend the night in the field, as many of the sites are a two-hour-plus drive away from the office in Bethesda. Over her two decades of working with the conservancy, (this year marks her 20th anniversary) she has learned to pack “twice as much water as you think you’ll need” and dry socks “because there’s nothing more miserable than driving home for four hours in wet socks.”

Half the time, Landau goes out on her own. On monitoring trips, such as when she has to check up on another rare plant—harperella—she’ll have a crew of around five people with her. The plant grows on the banks of a particularly clean river along Maryland’s Sideling Hill Creek.

“The only way you can monitor it is by literally walking in the creek,” Landau said. “I just walk down the middle of the creek, with people on either side of the banks, and it’s six or seven hours of that. It’s a small plant, so you really have to be looking.”

When Landau is monitoring orchids, and in particular the Cypripedium candidum, more commonly known as white lady’s slipper, she needs a small, carefully chosen team because they need binoculars to even spot the flowers. They’re a select group of people who she uses regularly year after year. The group is instructed to turn off GPS functions on their phones, to guard the secret location.

The plant is highly sought after by collectors, who will think nothing of stealing into the preserve at night and nabbing the flower. The white lady’s slipper is so-called for its bulbous, white oval petal, speckled with pink, which folds over to create a pouch, with the lip covered by a yellow petal that delicately drapes over the opening. The reason the stunning plant is still in this area is that it is so hard to get to.

The river where the orchid grows in proximity to sits hundreds of feet below the undulating western Maryland mountains. Dirt roads wind through farms and forest, but none make it to the river bottom. The terrain is so steep that it’s simpler for Landau’s team to wade through the river itself to access the sites where the flower grows.

© Photo: Gabe Cahlan A white fringed orchid (Platanthera blephariglottis) with a butterfly landing on it.

A white fringed orchid (Platanthera blephariglottis).

It’s not a simple wade in the park, though; the team must also slide down a steep creekside, battle coarse undergrowth, scramble around rocks, wade through chilly streams, and finally perch on a precarious ledge so they can scan the tough, unforgiving landscape with binoculars in hopes of sighting the elusive orchid. Luckily, it takes dedication to hunt for the white lady’s slipper, which is helpful in keeping this fragile, enigmatic species protected.

Like the Canby’s dropwort, suppression of natural fire cycles, leading to an encroachment by woody plants and brush has contributed to pushing this flower to the brink of extinction. Residential development, alterations in the watershed system, and competition for resources with other invasive species have also made the chances of survival increasingly slim.

And despite the challenges, sometimes the most determined of orchid poachers manage to locate the delicately blossomed flower, leaving Landau to simply hope the collectors will look but not touch.

“I’m in a lot of rare plant groups on Facebook,” Landau said. “And every now and again I’ll see my orchids. I know a couple people know where that site is, and they’ll scramble down and take a picture. I’ll reach out to them and very kindly, but personally say this is a private property, this is a rare plant, please respect the fact that we’re protecting it for a very good reason. And they usually understand.”

Landau has had run-ins with poachers, one who had asked permission to collect rare carnivorous pitcher plants on the eastern shore of Maryland. Of course, Landau declined, but on one occasion found the person driving out of the site where the plants are located.

“I notified the Department of Natural Resources, and they said they’ve got their eye on him,” she said. “But there wasn’t anything they could do.”

So Landau reached out to the man directly.

“I said no,” she quipped, impersonating a schoolteacher-like tone. “As far as I know, he hasn’t been back.”

Landau’s passion and love for her land are overwhelmingly obvious and have been the driver behind her decades of work. So, too, is her relationship with the orchids she’s fighting to keep alive in a world increasingly pushing them to the brink.

“I really do love them,” she said. “They’re so mysterious, so much is [happening] behind the scenes, underground. They are so tied in with the ecosystem. They need their pollinators. But you don’t see the microbial fungi although you know it’s playing a role, and the fungi is probably associated with the adjacent deciduous trees that’s 20 feet [6 meters] away. They’re always an exciting find anytime you run across one. Even if it’s the 100th that you’ve seen that day.”

Landau can wax lyrical about her love of orchids for hours. Just don’t ask her for tips on how to raise them.

“I can’t grow them for the life of me. I have a horrible green thumb. I’m terrific in the field. Restoration is what I was made to do. When it comes to house plants? Forget it.”

Lucy Sherriff is a freelance multimedia journalist who covers the environment and human rights. She’s based in Los Angeles, and usually focuses on American West and Latin American coverage.

Anglo-Saxon cave dwelling may have been home to a king who became a saint

By Jack Guy, CNN 

Archaeologists in England have identified a near-complete Anglo-Saxon cave house, which, they say, may once have been the home of a king who became a saint.

© Edmund Simons/Royal Agricultural University Archaeologists say the cave dwelling is much older than previously thought.

Thought to date from the early 9th century, the dwelling in the central English county of Derbyshire was discovered by a team from the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) and Wessex Archaeology, according to a news release published Wednesday.

The team carried out a detailed survey of the Anchor Church Caves in south Derbyshire, concluding that the caves probably date from the early medieval period rather than the 18th century as previously thought.

Edmund Simons, a research fellow at the RAU, told CNN the cave is a "small, intimate space" that is one of the oldest domestic interiors surviving in the UK.

While there are a few churches with intact interiors that date from a similar period, Simons said, "there's nowhere else really where you can walk into somewhere where somebody ate and slept and prayed and lived."

"It's quite remarkable," he added.

The researchers carried out a detailed study to reconstruct a house featuring three rooms, as well as a chapel.

Dating the cave house

A number of factors combined to date the dwelling to the early 9th century, Simons said.

The caves are cut from soft sandstone rock and their narrow doorways and windows resemble Saxon architecture, while a rock-cut pillar is similar to one found in a nearby Saxon crypt.

The Anchor Church Caves are also linked by local folklore and a fragment of a 16th-century book to a saint.

St. Hardulph has been identified as King Eardwulf, who ruled Northumbria until 806. He died around 830 and was buried five miles from the caves, in Breedon on the Hill in Leicestershire

.

© Edmund Simons/Royal Agricultural University The cave house is believed to have been home to a former king, Eardwulf, who was later canonized.

Around the time of his death, Viking raids on Britain, which started in the late 8th century, had grown in size.

The Vikings arrived in the area and set up a winter camp in nearby Repton shortly after Hardulph's death. As their Great Heathen Army slaughtered all the local religious figures, this suggests the cave house must date from before their arrival, Simons explained.

"All of these things fit together," he added.

© Mark Horton/Royal Agricultural University The cave was altered in the 18th century, with brickwork and window frames added.

Hardulph would not have been a "beardy weirdy" who lived in the cave alone, said Simons, but a kind of living saint who had servants and disciples and visitors who would come to consult him.

He is one of a number of deposed Saxon kings who lived out their years as monks or hermits as a way of keeping their status.

"A hermit is an important and holy person," said Simons. "It's an incredibly religious period."

18th century renovations

In the 18th century, the caves were modified by local landowner and aristocrat Robert Burdett, who added brickwork and window frames so that he could invite friends for dinner in the "cool and romantic cells" of the caves, according to the press release.

At the time there was a growing interest in Romanticism, an artistic and literary movement that made connections to the medieval period, as well as the picturesque aesthetic of rural England.

Burdett also widened the entrances to get tables, drinks and women in wide skirts into the cave, Simons said.

The analysis is part of a wider project involving more than 170 cave houses in the English Midlands, he said, adding that some date from a similar period and preliminary investigations suggest that a few could be even older than the Anchor Church caves.

"It is extraordinary that domestic buildings over 1200 years old survive in plain sight, unrecognised by historians, antiquarians and archaeologists," Mark Horton, professor of archaeology at the RAU, said in the news release.

"We are confident that other examples are still to be discovered to give a unique perspective on Anglo Saxon England."

The study is published in the Proceedings of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society.

© Mark Horton/Royal Agricultural University Researchers are analyzing more than 170 cave houses as part of a wider project.

Over 10,000 Amazon rainforest species risk extinction, landmark report warns

CBC/Radio-Canada 

© Leo Correa/The Associated Press Smoke rises from a fire in the Amazon rainforest near the Trans-Amazon highway in Ruropolis, Para state, Brazil, in this November 2019 photo.

More than 10,000 species of plants and animals are at high risk of extinction due to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest — 35 per cent of which has already been deforested or degraded, according to the draft of a landmark scientific report published on Wednesday.

Produced by the Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA), the report brings together research on the world's largest rainforest from 200 scientists from across the globe.

It is the most detailed assessment of the state of the forest to date and both makes clear the vital role the Amazon plays in global climate and the profound risks it is facing.


Cutting deforestation and forest degradation to zero in less than a decade "is critical," the report said. It also called for massive restoration of already destroyed areas.

The rainforest is a vital bulwark against climate change both for the carbon it absorbs and what it stores. According to the report, the soil and vegetation of the Amazon hold about 200 billion tonnes of carbon, more than five times the world's annual CO2 emissions.

Furthermore, the report said the continued destruction caused by human interference in the Amazon puts more than 8,000 endemic plants and 2,300 animals at high risk of extinction.
'Narrow window' for change, scientist warns

Science shows humans face potentially irreversible and catastrophic risks due to multiple crises, including climate change and biodiversity decline, said University of Brasilia professor Mercedes Bustamante, in a statement published by the SPA.

"There is a narrow window of opportunity to change this trajectory," she said. "The fate of Amazon is central to the solution to the global crises."

In Brazil, deforestation has surged since right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019, reaching a 12-year high last year and drawing international outcry from foreign governments and the public.

Bolsonaro has called for mining and agriculture in protected areas of the Amazon and has weakened environmental enforcement agencies, which environmentalists and scientists say has directly resulted in the rising destruction.

A week ago, neighbouring Colombia reported that deforestation rose eight per cent in 2020 versus 2019 — to 171,685 hectares. Nearly 64 per cent of the destruction took place in the country's Amazon region.

According to the report, of the Amazon basin's original size, 18 per cent has already been deforested — mostly for agriculture and illegal timber. Another 17 per cent has been degraded.
Some spots emit more carbon than they absorb

The destruction may threaten the very ability of the rainforest to function as a carbon sink, with potentially devastating results for the global climate change.

A separate study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday showed that some parts of the Amazon are emitting more carbon than they absorb, based on measurements of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide taken from above the rainforest between 2010 and 2018.

Lead author Luciana Gatti, a scientist at Brazil's Inpe space research agency, suggests the increased carbon emissions in southeastern Amazonia — where deforestation is fierce — is not only the result of fires and direct destruction, but also due to rising tree mortality as severe drought and higher temperatures become more common.

Sha’Carri Richardson’s experience hits home for Black women using cannabis for self-care
Julianne McShane 

When Mary Pryor’s mother, 63-year-old Deborah Ann, was struggling with multiple sclerosis-induced pain in 2015, she turned to cannabis after morphine stopped being effective, her daughter said.

© Provided by NBC News

As a result, before she died, her mother’s pain drastically reduced, and “she was able to eat some of her favorite foods,” said Pryor, 39, who lives in New York.

That same year, Pryor — co-founder of Cannaclusive, a group that promotes inclusive representations of cannabis consumers — had started using cannabis to manage her Crohn’s disease after a slate of 20 different medications had left her both in pain and homebound for about a year, she said.

© Cannaclusive Image: Mary Pryor (Cannaclusive)

“When I was taking more aggressive pharmaceutical items, it made my system suffer more,” she said. Pryor felt like she had to choose between cannabis or “medication that makes my life miserable.”

When Pryor heard the news earlier this month that U.S. sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson would be barred from competing at the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for THC, the chemical in marijuana, which Richardson said she used to cope with the death of her mother a week earlier, it “struck home for me,” Pryor said.

She’s not alone: Pryor is one of five Black women who told NBC News that they see Richardson’s removal from Team USA as the product of an enduring social stigma against cannabis, particularly against Black people, who are about 3.6 times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession despite similar usage rates, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

But these women characterize the plant as a cornerstone of their self-care, particularly through the last year, when daily stressors were exacerbated by both the Covid-19 pandemic, which disproportionately impacted Black Americans, and high-profile incidents of police killings of Black people.
An Olympic dream deferred

Richardson tested positive for THC based on a sample collected during the Olympic trials in June. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency announced, based on the new rules by the World Anti-Doping Agency, that she would be banned from competition for one month, opening the door for her to be placed on a relay team during the later parts of the Olympics in Tokyo.

Richardson earned a shorter ban after completing “a counseling program regarding her use of cannabis.”

“I want to take responsibility for my actions,” she said on NBC's "TODAY" show earlier this month. “I’m not looking for an excuse.”

“I would like to say to my fans and my family and my sponsorship, to the haters, too, I apologize,” she added. “As much as I’m disappointed, I know that when I step on that track, I don’t represent myself; I represent a community that has shown me great support, great love.”

The USADA’s decision would not have prevented Richardson from competing in the 4x100-meter relay at the Olympic Games, but USA Track & Field did not select her for a spot on that team, the governing body announced July 6.

In a statement, USA Track & Field noted it was “incredibly sympathetic toward Sha’Carri Richardson’s extenuating circumstances and strongly applaud her accountability,” but “our credibility ... would be lost if rules were only enforced under certain circumstances.”

The governing body also acknowledged it “fully agrees that the merit of the World Anti-Doping Agency rules related to THC should be reevaluated.”

 Patrick Smith Image: Sha'Carri Richardson (Patrick Smith / Getty Images)

In an earlier statement, USA Track & Field said, “We will work with Sha’Carri to ensure she has ample resources to overcome any mental health challenges now and in the future.”

Video: U.S. track star Sha’Carri Richardson speaks out after suspension over positive marijuana test (NBC News)

Marijuana is legal in Oregon, where the trials were held, but it is still illegal on a national scale. Senate Democrats plan to reveal a draft bill to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level.

A Gallup poll last year found that 68 percent of Americans support legalizing marijuana — the highest rate the polling agency has found since it first started measuring public opinion on the issue in 1969, when only 12 percent of the country supported it.
Cannabis as a way ‘to find center and calm’

Women are turning to cannabis in droves, constituting 59 percent of new cannabis users in 2020, according to research conducted by Brightfield Group, a cannabis market research company. It also found that 21 percent of female respondents used cannabis daily, and 81 percent of overall respondents said cannabis helped them deal with the stress of the pandemic.

For Black women, those stressors have been acute. And for Ebony Andersen and Whitney Beatty, cannabis was crucial to getting through the past year: Both have sons who were aware of — and anxious about — last summer’s uprisings in response to police brutality against Black people, leading the women to turn to the plant to manage the stress that came with talking to their boys about anti-Black racism.

“My son is biracial — having one Black parent and one white parent in the middle of what looked like war was very confusing to him. There was some self-medication that happened for sure, just to survive during that time,” Andersen, 49, said. “It was very much clear and apparent to me that we have to take our own health and our own well-being into our hands.”

Whitney Beatty, left, and Ebony Andersen of Josephine and Billie's. (Robiee Ziegler)

Part of how Andersen and Beatty did that was by launching Josephine & Billie’s, a cannabis dispensary slated to open in Los Angeles in September. (California legalized recreational marijuana use in 2016, but arrests continued to disproportionately target Hispanic and Black people, who were, respectively, about twice and four times more likely than white Californians to be arrested for marijuana in 2019, according to the state’s arm of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.)

Aimed at educating women of color about how to use cannabis as a form of self-care, Josephine & Billie’s will host classes for mothers and older people, among others, about how to make cannabis work for them. They’ll also educate customers about how to use it in conjunction with meditation and other wellness practices, the duo said.

Both Beatty, Josephine & Billie’s chief executive officer and founder, and Andersen, its chief operating officer, came to use cannabis after the medical establishment failed them, they said: Beatty started using it after a doctor recommended she try it following an anxiety attack, and Andersen began using it to manage both her insomnia and migraines. Those experiences shape how they want to teach other women of color to use cannabis — especially in a society in which Black women, like Richardson, continue to be penalized for doing so.

“It is a radical act of resistance. It’s a radical act of taking back a plant that our ancestors cultivated and grew, to utilize the plant for self-care and recreational purposes,” Beatty, 42, said. “Sometimes it’s hard to find educational information that teaches you how to use cannabis specifically. We want to allow people to understand how to apply cannabis to their lives in a way that’s helpful and useful.”

Wanda James is driven by a similar mission, as the first Black woman legally licensed to sell cannabis in the country, she said. The owner of Denver-based dispensary Simply Pure, James, 57, is dedicated to combating the decades-old racialized stigma around cannabis — often by confronting it head-on.

“The way that I normalize cannabis is that I talk about it — when I’m around somebody who has an issue with it, I bring it up,” she said.

In Colorado, longstanding legalization means cannabis use is relatively normalized, James said: Voters approved a plan for medical marijuana in 2000, and recreational sales began in 2014. Black people make up less than 5 percent of the state’s population, but they have been disproportionately penalized for cannabis use, having been arrested on marijuana charges at nearly double the rate of white people in 2017, according to a 2018 state report.

These are among the inequities that drive James to turn to cannabis to find moments of peace.

“We live in a world where we need to find center and calm,” she said. “I believe, for me, that enjoying a joint is that five minutes [of calm]. ... It’s calming, it’s relaxing, it helps you get your head together.”

For Jessamyn Stanley, cannabis is one half of how she finds calm. The other is yoga, and the two are inextricably linked as part of her wellness practice, she said.

 Jessamyn Stanley (Jade Wilson)

“Cannabis really allows for a lot of patience and presence in a way that I think our lives in capitalist society don’t always allow for,” Stanley, 34, said. “In yoga, it allows you to really tap into your most true self, to connect your mind, body and spirit — so cannabis is really the cleansing agent within yourself so that you’re able to have that deeper internal conversation.”

Stanley — who shares her yoga practices and cannabis use with more than 467,000 Instagram followers — began posting about yoga in 2012 and went public with her cannabis use about six years later, she said. The initial reaction from followers was mixed, Stanley said.

“The stigma of what it means to be a cannabis user is so profound,” she said. “It’s something that, as a Black woman, I definitely am very aware of the way that I’m perceived by other people. … Black women are held to a standard that is completely different than the standard that others are held to.”

That double standard is part of what drove Stanley to co-found We Go High NC, a “cannabis justice organization” dedicated to destigmatizing and decriminalizing cannabis use in the state.

Stanley is one among many Black female cannabis users who see the double standard at play in Richardson’s case, she said. But, like James, she sees speaking out about the power of the plant as a personal form of resistance.

“I realized that the reason I never talked about cannabis is because of this stigma, and then I was like, ‘I am a part of the stigma — my silence in not speaking is my co-signature on the whole system,’” Stanley said.

Follow NBCBLK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

RIP

Tim Tabbert was known as the singing farmer with very deep ties to the NFU

Forester’s Falls – A solitary tractor stood guard outside the cemetery not far from Tim Tabbert’s farm on the Queen’s Line as a reminder of a man with a deep love for farming, passion for karaoke, a penchant for old tractors and an irrepressible twinkle in his eye.

“He was known as the singing farmer,” his cousin Christine Tabbert said while delivering his eulogy at the cemetery on Monday morning. “He loved karaoke. He loved the attention and the music.”
Advertisement

Mr. Tabbert, 62, passed away on July 6 at Renfrew Victoria Hospital with family by his side. He had been diagnosed two months before with Glioblastoma, the same brain tumour which took the life of many others before him including Canadian singer Gord Downie.

Born and raised in the farming community, he was the eldest son of five and came from a large extended family, including 33 first cousins.

“The values Tim learned on a farm growing up lasted a lifetime,” Christine said.

As an adult he moved into the Broome homestead of his maternal ancestors and farmed there. He also did custom fieldwork and had a business spreading liquid manure.

“Tim became known up and down the Valley for his hard work and his antics,” she said.

He was also a man of faith, who could be heard telling others “the Lord will provide” when there were the farming concerns of too little rain, too much rain and other issues.

A father of three, she said her cousin showed his love and affection through action and service. He was the dad who would make the ice on the rink at Queen’s Line and took great pride in the quality of the ice and making sure there was a fire for the children to warm up to. After this he also made sure there was a rink at the farm for them too, she added.

Readers of the Leader and the Cobden Sun are familiar with the by-line of Connie Tabbert, who married Tim in 2008 and the two have been inseparable since. Their love was so strong Connie gave up most of her journalistic efforts for farming and milking, joining her husband in his farming life and passion for farming issues. Their love story and wedding in which the happy couple left on one of Tim’s tractors – he had 13 – still captivated the imagination of those who were at the event many years later. They were both deeply involved in the National Farmers Union (NFU) where Tim served in executive positions as director, vice president and president of the local branch as well as regional director and was active at provincial and national conventions.

“He loved going to protests in Ottawa with his manure truck or one of his tractors,” Christine recalled.

One time he filled the manure spreader with water and close to Parliament Hill decided to spread the water. Unbeknownst to him, a police officer was right behind him and it appears Mr. Tabbert did not do a complete job of cleaning out the manure spreader before filling it with water, so the officer was showered with a smelly liquid. The officer started writing up every ticket he could think of, only to be told by his commanding officer no tickets were to be given to protestors.

Known for his white “Santa Claus” beard, he shaved it off for Hospice Renfrew and raised $270 in the proceeds. He was also known for his smoked sausage and loved making it with extended family using the traditional recipe.

His local NFU colleagues recalled a sharp, quick-witted man who was a loyal member and passionate about farming issues.

Lauretta Rice pointed out since Mr. Tabbert grew up on a dairy farm and then raised beef cattle he had a good understanding of various aspects of farming. She also laughed as she recalled his spirit of fun.

“He was always playing tricks,” she said. “He was the joy of the national convention every year. He was up till 4 o’clock having fun and up again at 7.”

She also pointed out she never heard him say a derogatory word about anyone. “He was complementary regardless of who you were,” she said.

Marshall Buchanan, the president of the local NFU chapter, said he appreciated while Mr. Tabbert was a committed farmer, he never let his business take over his life.

“Tim learned he wanted to make a success with his relationship with his friends,” he said. “He spent a lot of time supporting his friends.”

Despite strong opinions, Mr. Tabbert never lost his temper at meetings, he said.

“He would deliver his opinions carefully,” he said. “He did not lecture you. He had dignity in the way he conducted himself.”

He is survived by his wife Connie, children, Christopher (Amy), Amanda (Alain) and Shaun and grandchildren, Henry and Veronica, as well as his mother, Eleanor and siblings, Terry (Jennifer), Bonnie (Kent), Danny (Lynda) and Linda (Vivian) and many nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles and cousins.

Debbi Christinck, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Eganville Leader

Two endangered right whales entangled in fishing gear in Gulf of St. Lawrence

FREDERICTON — A New Brunswick-based whale-rescue team says two North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are entangled in fishing gear, a dangerous situation experts say risks killing the endangered animals.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Mackie Greene, director of the Campobello Whale Rescue program, said Wednesday the group tried last week to free Snow Cone, a female who had been originally spotted entangled off Cape Cod, Mass., last spring. Greene said an American crew removed some of the rope at the time but had to call off their efforts because of bad weather, adding that the whale continued north into Canadian waters.


"She was spotted in May in the Gulf and we responded and were able to get 30 feet of rope off of the whale, but she still has rope wound in her mouth, in her baleen and some trailing lines," he said.

Greene said his team was able to remove three pieces of rope last week, adding that the animal appears healthy and is feeding; however, he said, more rope needs to be removed. "Snow Cone has a pretty sad story," Greene said. "She's a female, born in 2005. The year before last she had a calf and was coming north and the calf was run down and killed."

He says a larger, mature whale that's also entangled in gear has been spotted about 80 kilometres northeast of Shippagan, N.B., in an area where all the right whales appear to be congregated. Unlike Snow Cone, Greene said it appears the whale likely became entangled in the Gulf — perhaps the result of fishing gear that had been lost.

The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans issued a statement Wednesday saying the whale is a five-year-old male and the first entangled North Atlantic right whale reported in Canadian waters since 2019. The whale, it said, appeared to be badly injured, according to a report from a crew aboard a New England Aquarium research ship operating in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.

A satellite tag was attached to the gear, the department said, adding that it will continue to track the whale. Greene said his group will try to free that whale this weekend with the help of the Fisheries Department.

As for Snow Cone, Greene said rescuers put a lot of strain on the whale last week and want to give her a bit of time to recover. "We are going to try again to see if we can cut those lines closer to her mouth," he said. "Unfortunately, that's about all we can do. The mouth is always the hardest part to get at. When you get close to them, they'll dive."

Last month, scientists reported a troubling reduction in the length of North Atlantic right whales, suggesting their stunted growth could be the result of hauling around fishing gear. Since June 2017, an unusually large number of the whales have died, reducing the population to fewer than 400 animals — a number that has some experts warning that the species is on the brink of extinction. Ship strikes and fishing gear entanglements account for most of the deaths.

The Canadian government has imposed a series of measures over the past four years to protect the whales, including periodic fisheries closures and mandatory speed limits. At least 34 North Atlantic right whales died between 2017 and 2021 — 21 of them in Canadian waters.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 14, 2021.

Kevin Bissett, The Canadian Press

IT WAS A FALSE ARREST ALL THE SAME
Officers cleared of misconduct in takedown of Alberta teen in 'Star Wars' costume

LETHBRIDGE, Alta. — Three southern Alberta police officers have been cleared of misconduct after a restaurant worker in a “Star Wars'' storm-trooper costume and carrying a plastic gun ended up with a bloody nose when she was forced to the ground.© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Lethbridge officers had already been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing for the arrest in May 2020, but were being investigated by the Medicine Hat Police Service for professional misconduct under Alberta's Police Act.

"There is no doubt that this incident was extremely stressful for the woman involved as she likely did not understand what was happening and was not able to see or communicate well through her helmet," Lethbridge police Chief Shahin Mehdizadeh said in a statement Wednesday.

"Firearm calls like this are also very stressful for officers who are trying to process everything very quickly, while protecting themselves and other people in the area from a potentially lethal weapon."

The owner of the Coco Vanilla Galactic Cantina in Lethbridge has said the 19-year-old employee had agreed to carry a toy blaster and wear the elaborate white uniform to get the attention of people celebrating May 4. The day is popular among fans of the movie franchise because of the famous line “May the force be with you.''

That day, two separate 911 calls came in to report a person dressed as a storm trooper was carrying a real firearm, Lethbridge police said.

Three officers responded and saw the person was carrying "what appeared from a distance" to be a black gun, police added.

In the statement, police said two of the three officers drew their weapons and the woman was told to move away from the gun and lay face down on the pavement.

"While the person did drop the weapon, step back and eventually kneel down, they appeared non-responsive to subsequent demands, and there was a belief the person might be searching for a path to escape," the release said.

Brad Whalen, the restaurant owner, said police forced his employee on her stomach, she hit her face and her nose started bleeding.

A video of the encounter, shared on social media, shows an officer standing by the blaster while Whalen yells from the restaurant door that it's fake. A woman can be heard crying.

Mehdizadeh said he reviewed the 250-page report from the Medicine Hat investigators and concluded no officers were guilty of misconduct. He said they saw the subject of the 911 call with what looked like a weapon "alone in the parking lot with no signs, music or activity to suggest the officer should not take seriously the potential threat that was reported."

The police chief also said the officers' actions were consistent with use-of-force policies, the encounter was less than three minutes long and they offered to help the women once they realized there was no threat.

"We do acknowledge the stress and confusion endured by the young woman in the costume, through no fault of her own," he said.

"I am satisfied, however, that our officers, operating in the face of their own stressful circumstance did everything in their power to minimize the impact of this event."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 14, 2021.

— By Daniela Germano in Edmonton

The Canadian Press