WBEZ | News

CPS limits coverage from closing schools

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:03:00 -0500

On Wednesday, the Chicago Board of Education will decide whether to close 54 schools it says are failing or underutilized.

Since the recommended list of closures was announced in March, the city has been in a heated debate about whether some schools should be taken off the list. Media access to these buildings has been almost impossible, and some worry decisions will be made without a thorough inspection.

Arturs Weible is a music teacher at Lafayette Elementary School in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. He directs the only string orchestra at a CPS elementary school.

“We have 85 kids participating in the program. And these kids have higher expectations to keep their grades up. They have to keep their behavior in order,” he said. “And so these kids are basically doing above and beyond pretty much anything that’s being asked of an elementary school child.”

Lafayette is slated to close because CPS considers it an underutilized building. Weible disagrees, and says all parts of the building are in use, but maybe not at all times of the day.

He says he wants the public to see the school before a decision is made.

“To not allow media coverage within school hours is not fair to these parents. They don’t have a voice otherwise. The media is the voice of the community,” he said.

Before CPS CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett announced the closings list, Weible said journalists got into Lafayette easily. Now, it’s like a black out with the exception of heavily restricted visits.

The district said since late March, every media outlet has had access to a proposed closing school and/or receiving school.

CPS says with less than a week until the board vote, it’s denying media access to the closing schools because it would be too disruptive. But a number of news organizations including WBEZ and Catalyst magazine say they’ve been denied access to closing schools since the list was made public.

Some reporters have successfully entered closing schools through other means.

“I was invited to come to Garvey by a parent,” said Kate Grossman, deputy editorial page editor for the Chicago Sun-Times.

She toured Garvey Elementary on the city’s South Side earlier this spring. It’s another school proposed to be closed because of underutilization.

She said there are numbers to back up CPS’s closing recommendations, but there’s also the reality of what’s happening inside.

“You can see that by going to these schools and seeing that they have quite a lot to offer kids even though on paper they’re underused,” she said. “So I think it’s a crucial part of the decision making when you’re deciding to close a school and consolidate it with another to know what you might be losing.”

Grossman said her visit to Garvey was very different from when she was invited by CPS to tour a receiving school with CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett.

“It was lots of people, and you can’t really do a lot of in-depth reporting when you’re following a school CEO around. And the principal might not be comfortable speaking her mind,” she said.

A student at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism also tried to gain access to schools without permission. CPS threatened to sever ties with Medill if it happened again.

Professor Marcel Pacatte agreed the student was wrong, but said the district’s response was extreme.

“A student was told yesterday there would be no more audio recording at closing schools. So that’s a fairly draconian issue,” he said.

Pacatte said now he’s making sure students are going through the proper channels to ensure Medill can continue covering the schools.

“I get where they’re coming from but I still don’t understand how they think it’s beneficial for the citizens of Chicago or the students in the schools of the district in the city itself to prevent stories from being told,” he said.

Media restrictions aren’t uncommon for urban school districts.

But Emily Richmond with the National Education Writers Association says too many restrictions can force reporters to find another way into the schools.

“There’s really no substitute for being able to just step back and watch what’s happening around you and have that first hand observation. And who knows what stories they would find in there,” she said.

Richmond says with an historic number of schools that could be affected, news coverage needs to go beyond statistics and present a clearer view of what’s happening.

Susie An covers business for WBEZ. Follow her @soosieon.

Where was Congressman Gutierrez at 25?

Tue, 07 May 2013 15:04:00 -0500

Illinois U.S. Congressman Luis Gutierrez has made a name for himself across the nation as one of the most vocal proponents of immigration reform.

Gutierrez is a longtime member of the U.S. House of Representatives – he's been serving since 1992. And years before that, he served as alderman of the 26th Ward in Chicago.

So, you’d think, this guy must have been working toward a spot on Capitol Hill all his life.

Wrong.

25-year-old Luis Gutierrez was a 1st, 2nd and 3rd teacher in Puerto Rico. He had followed his then-girlfriend, Soraida, there and eventually married her.

The two were making a life for themselves - Soraida was going to school, and Luis was the lone male teacher in a little school out in the mountains. He was paid minimum wage - about $3.25 per hour, he says – which was hardly enough to feed the two of them and get Soraida to school. So, as Gutierrez recalls, he gave what little money he had to Soraida for school and then got creative.

“I remember - it’s probably a violation of the law today, I hope it wasn’t one then, although I’m sure the statute of limitations have run out,” Gutierrez said. “I used to eat with all the children in the school lunch program.”

Gutierrez says he soon realized Puerto Rico wasn’t the best option for him and his wife, so they moved back to Chicago, where he was from originally. After a month or so of fruitless attempts to find a job, Gutierrez decided to get his his chauffeur's license and drive a cab.

Yes, you read that right. Illinois U.S. Congressman Luis Gutierrez, drove a cab when he was 25 years old.

“So, for all of those that see the cab driver, remember, it could be a transitional moment in their life, and one day they could be actually adopting and proposing the laws of the nation, that guy in the front seat,” Gutierrez said.

In this interview with WBEZ’s Lauren Chooljian, Gutierrez tells the stories of his 25th year, and explains how that person had not a clue in the world that he’d wind up in elected politics. He also discusses how his personality has changed over the years, and what parts of his 25-year-old self had to change in order to be the lawmaker he is today.

Lauren Chooljian is the WBEZ Morning Producer and Reporter. Follow her @laurenchooljian

Hyperlocal: The Brave New News World

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:34:00 -0500

The new trend of hyperlocal news coverage is redefining the news landscape. Is this a new opportunity to target your brand, client or product for a certain niche audience? Or, is it a waste of your valuable media relations time? What are the opportunities it is/will afford PR pros and their strategy of story pitches? This panel will explore this issue. Panalists include:

John Lampinen,Senior Vice President and Editor, Herald Newspaper
Ronald Roenigk, Editor, Inside Publications
Brian Slupski, Regional Editor with Patch.com
Shamus Toomey, DNAinfo.com
Peter Kendal, Deputy Managing Editor, Chicago Tribune

Moderator: Thom Clark, President, Community Media Workshop

Recorded live Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at Maggiano's Little Italy.

News quiz time!

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 05:00:00 -0600

Have you been paying attention? Honestly, it makes no difference. Because this quiz is rich with links directing you to places where you'll find the answers.

If, on the other hand, you're the sort of person who likes to complete these things unaided, we'll believe you if you tell us you answered without peeking.

Really, we will.

Honest.

ANNOUNCEMENTS.
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* Follow us on Twitter: @WBEZ and @Meyerson.

Display examines musicians and public housing

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:32:00 -0600

An exhibit that explores the music and artists who grew up in public housing projects opens later this week in Chicago. It's called "The Sound, the Soul, the Syncopation" and opens Thursday at Expo 72.

The interactive exhibit's sponsors include the National Public Housing Museum and the city's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special events.

Organizers say the display will address the role of music in the creation and development of community. The exhibit will include artists in country, hip-hop, punk, jazz, gospel and pop.

The National Public Housing Museum hasn't opened yet. Officials say they've received donations for the facilities capital campaign and are on track to break ground on the city's near West Side early next year.

Learn Lessons From Disasters? No, Thanks

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:00:00 -0500

The seemingly unbroken run of news this year about earthquakes, floods and wildfires will prompt lots of discussion about how and where houses get built, in hopes of making them safer.

But chances are that few regulatory changes will actually occur.

Rewriting the codes that regulate building practices is a long, drawn-out process that encounters push-back every step of the way from home builders and other property-rights advocates, because of their concern about the impact on the cost of construction.

And even people who have experienced disaster can quickly grow complacent, convinced that lightning — literally or figuratively — won't strike in the same place twice.

"People don't think it's going to happen to them more than once," says Julie Rochman, president of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.

"After a terrible tornado hits, people think, 'What are the chances that another tornado is going to hit my house again in the time I'm living here?' " Rochman says. "We get a disease known as disaster amnesia."

Fool Me Twice

Building codes set minimum safety standards for construction, such as requiring steel reinforcement of masonry buildings.

Earlier this year, state officials in North Carolina signed off on an agreement to weaken building codes that pertain to protection against wind damage. It was a trade-off. They wanted to raise energy efficiency standards in order to qualify for federal grants, so they made a deal with the North Carolina Builders Association to soften other requirements to help offset the cost.

But in April, some 60 tornadoes ripped across Raleigh and other parts of the state, killing more than 20 people. That quickly ended talk of weakening wind codes.

Safety advocates say that North Carolina lawmakers shouldn't have needed that timely reminder. The state has repeatedly been battered by big storms, including Hurricane Fran in 1996 and Hurricane Floyd in 1999 — and, more recently, Hurricane Irene.

"If you turn your back on a code and it's in a community where there hasn't been an event for a while, there's going to be a move to weaken the code," says Leslie Chapman-Henderson, president of the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, a nonprofit advocacy group. "This is a perpetual process in the United States."

When Emotions Are Raw

Florida — a flat peninsula vulnerable to hurricanes on three sides — enforces strict building codes. And states up and down the West Coast have learned to take earthquake protection seriously.

Such places are largely the exception, however. Even after the enormous damage wreaked by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Alabama and Mississippi still lack statewide building codes of any kind. Louisiana did strengthen its codes in response to that storm, but its enforcement of them is generally considered weak.

"I've seen this over and over again," says David Prevatt, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Florida. "If we don't get something passed immediately after the disaster, when memories are fresh and emotions are raw, typically nothing will get done for a very long time."

Joplin, Mo., did quickly adopt stronger wind codes after a May tornado killed more than 150 people. But despite serious damage to a third of the city, many people there questioned whether it was worth adopting such protections, given the odds of being struck by high winds again.

Even places that have been hit repeatedly by the same sort of disasters can drop their guard. The Gulf Coast of Texas, for example, is among the most flood-prone parts of the country. But new houses are built all the time along flat, coastal areas. And local jurisdictions vary widely in terms of whether they require basic protections such as storm shutters.

"Other than New Orleans, this is one of the most vulnerable places in the country for hurricane impacts," says Samuel Brody, director of the Center for Texas Beaches and Shores at Texas A&M University in Galveston. "But the recognition of hurricanes and vulnerability is counteracted by the desire to develop the landscape and reap what are usually short-term economic gains."

How Much Is Enough?

The additional costs that would result from safety mandates are often exaggerated, says Jim Wilkinson, executive director of the Central U.S. Earthquake Consortium in Memphis. Nonetheless, he concedes that builders, politicians and residents may all have different priorities than paying more for greater safety.

This winter marks the 200^th anniversary of a series of quakes along the New Madrid fault that was centered between St. Louis and Memphis but could be felt as far away as the East Coast. Scientists are convinced that a quake of comparable size will hit the area again, perhaps in our lifetimes.

With the area so much more populated, the amount of damage would be staggering. But 200 years is a long time between major disasters.

Even though there have been dozens of small quakes in Arkansas this year, local officials throughout the region remain reluctant to update their codes to protect against something that might not happen for decades.

"There's that continual debate, whether it's Memphis or Arkansas or Kentucky," Wilkinson says. "How strong is strong enough, and should we be building to a code comparable to California?"

Bearing The Cost

States including Tennessee and Hawaii have passed laws in recent years requiring local governments to update their codes and make them more uniform. Those laws have mostly been ignored, however.

Soon after a disaster, many people stop worrying about it happening again. And the full impact of rebuilding costs is often masked, thanks to federal assistance. Why pay now, when someone else will pay later?

The tornadoes that touched down this spring in Joplin and Tuscaloosa, Ala., caused roughly $6 billion worth of damage — or about 3 percent of each state's GDP, says Prevatt, the Florida professor.

"The only reason Joplin or Tuscaloosa was not an even larger issue is that we have spread that loss over 300 million people," he says.

It Will Happen Here

For that reason, many people question the wisdom of federal flood insurance and other programs that encourage people to rebuild in the exact place where disaster has already struck.

"If you want to build in an inherently dangerous location, I would say more power to you — but the taxpayer shouldn't be paying to rebuild your place," says Ed McMahon, a senior research fellow at the Urban Land Institute.

With the advent of climate change, McMahon notes, more and more places will become vulnerable. Many states this year have coped with extreme floods or drought — or both.

Just in recent weeks, disasters have occurred in unexpected places, including a sizable earthquake in central Virginia and extensive tropical storm damage in Vermont.

"It's not just the places that are in the obvious danger zones, on the coasts or in the deserts," McMahon says. "It's every place."

Five Ways The Postal Service Could Reinvent Itself

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 07:43:00 -0500

By the end of September, the U.S. Postal Service will be on the brink of defaulting on its employee pension obligations, unable to borrow more money and have just enough cash to cover operations for a week.

Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe issued the warning to a Senate committee on Tuesday as he pleaded with Congress to intervene before Sept. 30 by granting him unprecedented authority to make radical changes that could steer the agency from financial ruin. He said the Postal Service could report losses of up to $10 billion for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

On Tuesday, Donahue sought to help lawmakers grasp the scale of the problem by explaining that the broader $1 trillion-a-year mailing industry — which heavily depends on the Postal Service — "makes up approximately 7 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Failure to act would be catastrophic."

For the better part of the past decade, postal officials have asked for greater authority to restructure in the face of rising labor costs, inefficient operations and the rapid decline in mail volume as more letters and documents are sent electronically.

Donahue already has pushed through numerous changes to gain efficiencies and lower costs, and recently began the process of determining how many post offices will be closed out of roughly 4,000 deemed to be underused.

Now he's asking for the power to change delivery schedules, raise prices and lower labor costs by laying off potentially tens of thousands of workers, among other proposals. Lawmakers haven't been receptive to Donahue's requests, and many have balked at post-office closures.

But most observers agree that the situation has never been worse, and that Congress will have to act. Over the past three years, according to the Postal Service, a 20 percent drop in mailing has contributed to net losses of $20 billion.

Here are some potential changes that could help the Postal Service reinvent itself:

1. Ending Saturday mail delivery

This is one of Donahue's key proposals, which he began advocating more aggressively in 2010. Scaling back to five days of mail delivery could save about $3 billion a year, according to the Postal Service.

The idea has faced resistance among the biggest postal clients, direct mailers — companies that mail ads to consumers. Catalog and magazine publishers time their mailings to arrive at people's homes on Saturday, when consumers begin shopping for the weekend.

But opposition to mail-free Saturdays may be giving way. Linda Woolley, chief lobbyist for the Direct Marketing Association, says the organization hasn't taken a position on the issue, but "We think all of [the proposals] that are out there are good and they should do them. What we're not in favor of are any increases in postal rates."

If Saturday delivery is eliminated, experts say people can expect to receive heavier volumes of mail during the week. And people likely will be able to pick up shipped packages at nearby postal offices on Saturdays.

2. End or lower the Postal Service's mandate to "pre-fund" retiree health benefits

Congress requires the Postal Service to fully fund health benefits for retirees, in advance of when those benefits will be used. Donahue wants the mandate repealed and says the obligation is the biggest cause of the $20 billion in net losses from 2007 to 2010. Otherwise, he has said, the agency would have been in the black in 2010.

Congress faces pressure from postal employee unions to keep the mandate in force.

3. Restructure health and pension systems for postal employees

For starters, Donahue wants the government to refund the agency nearly $7 billion in overpayments to the federal employee pension system. More broadly, he wants to move the more than 563,000 postal employees out of that system and into a new program that would provide benefits at lower costs.

Postal union leaders reiterated their opposition to this at Tuesday's Senate committee hearing. Their unions are major supporters of Democratic lawmakers and are expected to try to kill the proposal.

4. Authority to change delivery schedules and work hours

This idea is also on Donahue's wish list. Any such changes require the approval of the labor unions, which have so far remained opposed. So Donahue wants Congress to break the collective bargaining agreements.

Industry experts say the postal service could gain huge savings through workplace changes. One commonly cited change would be pre-loading postal vehicles — and making sure they are fully stocked with mail, which isn't a current requirement. That could get letter carriers out on their routes sooner in the mornings and have them delivering more mail.

5. Increase retail

The goal would be to adopt private-sector practices that can turn the Postal Service's vast delivery network of post offices and vehicles into generators of profit. The most commonly cited example is DHL, the German-based global delivery giant that began as a unit of that nation's postal service. Another is TNT, which has its origins partly in the Netherlands' post office.

"If you look in Europe, the postal industry has been deregulated for many years now," says Doug Caldwell, an executive at the industry consultancy Parcel Research and a former manager at the Postal Service. "When you go into a post office in Europe, they look very different than our post offices. They often sell insurance, Internet access — just a range of creative ideas to make those facilities profitable. That's the question here."

Behind King Memorial, One Fraternity's Long Battle

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 09:54:00 -0500

The thousands of visitors at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington this week will reflect on the controversial likeness of the man, his legacy and the significance of the first nonpresident — and first African-American — immortalized on the National Mall.

But most of them probably won't know who built it.

They will find little about the pivotal role played by the African-American fraternity to which King belonged, Alpha Phi Alpha. The organization is more than a century old but largely unknown to nonblacks, and had no experience with a project of this magnitude.

"This is far-fetched," says Alpha Phi Alpha president Herman "Skip" Mason Jr. "I mean, come on."

The idea was born in 1983 at the dining table of the late Alpha brother George Sealy. Over the next three decades, the fraternity battled government commissions over location and design, raised about $112 million in a single six-year span and generally led a public campaign to justify why King deserved a place in the most exclusive section of the National Mall, alongside shrines to Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Alpha Phi Alpha won't be at all lost in the week's worth of festivities to dedicate the monument. Several of King's top lieutenants from the 1960s also are Alphas, and they are scheduled to be honored at numerous events. They include civil rights icons such as former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young and the Revs. Joseph Lowery and C.T. Vivian.

While the fraternity itself may hold little name recognition in mainstream America, many of its members are major power brokers in their professions and used their influence to raise money, push legislation through Congress, and design and build the project. They include several members of Congress and executives at General Motors, Toyota and McDonald's — including the fast-food chain's president and chief operating officer, Don Thompson.

Mason said they helped clear a number of obstacles along the way — and there were plenty. The project was denied its first choice of location, until Alphas in Congress "applied political pressure," he says, to reverse the decision and allow the memorial at the Tidal Basin. They calmed anger over the selection of Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin, against demands that an African-American be given the job. And when fundraising was at a trickle in the early 2000s (with only about $2 million collected solely from fraternity members), they devised a strategy that extracted commitments from many of the top U.S. corporations. When their building permit was held up, they helped secure a $12.5 million letter of credit from Wal-Mart to break ground.

They also put aside the age-old rivalries with fellow black fraternities and sororities to raise a total of about $1 million from those groups.

"I suppose we could beat our chests, but this was truly a total family effort from all our brothers and from the Divine Nine — the other black Greek organizations," Mason says.

For more details about the memorial and the role of Alpha Phi Alpha, we spoke with Harry S. Johnson Sr., president and CEO of the MLK Project Foundation and a former president of the fraternity. Excerpts:

Corey Dade: Plenty of big ideas have come from "kitchen cabinet" pow-wows — or from a dining table, in this case. But a national monument? How did the fraternity brothers arrive at it?

Harry E. Johnson Sr.: They thought we needed to have more people of color visit the National Mall. So in thinking about that, they felt the best way to have people of color visit was to have a person of color on the Mall. Quite naturally the name they came up with was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Dade: Did they choose King because of his legacy in civil rights, or also because he was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha?

Johnson: I would say for both reasons. They looked at a memorial for [civil rights activists] Rosa Parks or Dorothy Height. The first concept of the Martin Luther King memorial was actually comprised of having panels to each of the civil rights leaders. ... King was certainly the focal [point], but it was about honoring African-Americans, in general. But [in the end] the National Park Service said the bill authorizing it was for Dr. King, so it has to be only about Dr. King.

Dade: How much did they estimate the project would cost?

Johnson: Early on, those six visionaries thought this would be a million-dollar project. It wasn't until after you got the land and then the design that you were able to put an actual price tag on this.

Dade: Just $1 million? If they were only correct.

Johnson: I wish they were. We'd have been done years ago.

Dade: You wanted to put the memorial at the Tidal Basin on a plot of land known by the government as Area 1. But your proposal was initially rejected. Tell me about that.

Johnson: We had to deal with three different [governing] bodies. ... They had their own ideas about where they wanted this to go. Their original idea was that it needs to be built over near RFK Stadium and [the neighborhood of] Anacostia. They said because that's where the National Mall is going to go. We said, "Yes, in 100 years." So we had to fight and say, "Here's why we need to be in Area 1."

Dade: Why did you want the memorial on the Tidal Basin, or Area 1?

Johnson: There are statues all over D.C., but Area 1 is where you have the Jefferson and Lincoln, the George Washington memorials and all the major memorials. We felt from day one that Dr. King was of that ilk. We felt that Dr. King was a change agent for this country and that he was a hero at the same level.

Dade: Of course, the National Capital Planning Commission reversed itself and approved your original site proposal at the Tidal Basin. What led to this?

Johnson: Again, by just trying to make our case. Don't see this as an African-American project. Don't see Dr. King as an African-American hero. See him as an American hero. Where would you place an American hero?

Dade: By 2001, when you took over as president of Alpha Phi Alpha, how much money had been raised?

Johnson: About $1.5 to $2 million. General Motors had come onboard with a promise of $10 million. Tommy Hilfiger had come onboard with a promise of $5 million. But no commitments from any of those organizations. It was just the early stages of, "We're thinking about it." So, just a couple million from Alpha Phi Alpha.

Dade: You had significant obstacles to overcome in winning over potential donors. You represented a fraternity largely unknown among nonblacks that had no record of completing a project of this scale. And you asked them to support a memorial for a man who obviously represents one of the most turbulent, divisive and violent periods of U.S. history. So, what was your pitch?

Johnson: You're not going in for a handout. You're saying, "This is something you should consider supporting." If they said no, then we told them why they should support it: "You really should do this because it's the right thing to do." And we told them that this [money] isn't for an African-American project; this is for something that benefits the whole country.

Dade: Not an African-American project?

Johnson: While Dr. King was African-American and many of us running this [foundation] are African-American, we see this as a gift to the country for all Americans. We see it as a gift to the world, for people from all over the globe to see the great diversity of our country.

Dade: Wasn't there was some concern that you might not finish this project?

Johnson: Sure. It's the same issue that everybody building a memorial has to address. The World War II, the FDR memorials.

Dade: What was the goal of the design?

Johnson: The goal of the design is for you to be invited in. The second goal is that, as you pass through what we call the Mountain of Despair — two large boulders of granite, 30 feet tall — it appears as though you're going through a struggle of the civil rights movement.

Once you're on the other side, you see a crescent-shaped wall with 14 quotations from Dr. King. Then when you walk out toward the Tidal Basin, you see the third stone — one that looks like it was carved out of the Mountain of Despair. And Dr. King is standing there, and we call that the Stone of Hope.

The ultimate goal is for visitors to come and see and feel what Dr. King really meant to this country and, indeed, the world.

In San Francisco, Look Out For Gulls Gone Wild

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 23:01:00 -0500

The aggressive California gull is putting a San Francisco Bay restoration project at risk. For more than a century, the bay has been home to industrial salt-harvesting ponds. Now, thousands of acres of those ponds are being restored for shorebirds and wildlife.

But that's creating an opportunity for the problematic gull.

Gulls In The Outfield

You can see them at work on a visit to AT&T Park. In the bottom of the 9th inning, the San Diego Padres are up, 5-3, over the hometown Giants.

As the crowd cheers the late-inning comeback, hundreds of gulls appear from across the water. Like clockwork, they show up just before the game ends.

"Don't ask me how — they just know," says Mike Krukow, a broadcaster with the Giants. "They come in, and it's always with two outs to go in the 9th inning, and there they are."

The attraction, of course, is the half-eaten hot dogs and popcorn left in the stands. Gull numbers have grown so high that the ballpark is considering bringing in a falcon to scare them away; but that's not possible everywhere.

Tracking A Chick Colony

At the southern end of San Francisco Bay, a crew from the U.S. Geological Survey is working on a small island in the middle of a former salt pond. It's home to a colony of Forster's terns.

Garth Herring and a team of scientists fit the small tern chicks with radio transmitters.

"When that transmitter is attached to a live chick, the transmitter beeps at a very specific rate," Herring says.

If the chick dies, the beep slows down. But why do they need to know if a chick is dead?

"Just to the north of us, about roughly about a mile, there's one of the largest California gull colonies," Herring explains. "They'll come in, they'll grab the chick."

The gulls then feed the chick to their young. After it's digested, Herring and his team go looking for the still beeping transmitter.

"It's pretty common that we find just a small pile of bones and the radio transmitter," he says.

Snags In Restoration Plan

Last year, gulls ate 40 percent of the tagged tern chicks.

"They're the big bully," says Cheryl Strong, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She says California gulls first showed up in the Bay Area in the 1980s, and the population has exploded since then.

California gulls are one of the earliest nesting species, Strong says, and also probably the most aggressive.

The restoration project has spent millions of dollars on pond habitat for shorebirds like Forster's terns and the threatened Western snowy plover. But it's a conservation Catch-22: As habitat is restored for shorebirds, it also creates more habitat for gulls.

"With 40,000 gulls, there's not a lot of room for a lot of other birds," Strong says.

She says the Fish and Wildlife Service is studying ways to manage the gull problem. One option is killing the birds. But gulls can live up to 25 years and with an endless food source at nearby landfills and baseball parks, she says there's only so much they can do.

"If you're talking about removing birds lethally, it's just not feasible," she says.

'They Have Pretty Good Aim'

Caitlin Robinson-Nilsen is with the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory. Her job is to haze the gulls. She walks across a levee, blowing a whistle and waving her arms.

"So up ahead there are some gulls doing some courtship behaviors on the levee which is definitely a bad sign," Robinson-Nilsen says. "This is one of the areas where we definitely do not want them to nest."

The idea is to keep the gulls away from sensitive shorebirds — and they aren't happy about it.

"They'll dive bomb you and hit you in your head," she says. "They're very good at pooping on you. They have pretty good aim that way.

Robinson-Nilsen says they're hazing gulls twice a day during nesting season at selected sites near restoration areas. So far, it's working: there are fewer nests there. But with millions of tax dollars being spent on restoring habitat, biologists expect they'll be doing a lot more gull management in the years ahead.

The Taliban's Likely Negotiator With The U.S.

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:21:00 -0500

After months of rumors, most observers in Kabul now believe that American officials have met with a Taliban envoy face to face. The most likely interlocutor is Tayyeb Agha, the head of the Taliban political committee and one of a handful of people in the world said to have direct contact with Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban.

Agha was last seen by world media nearly 10 years ago, as he gave defiant statements from the Taliban's last stronghold in Kandahar. While his rhetoric about thousands of fighters waiting anxiously to defeat the American invaders proved empty, Agha impressed many with his command of several languages, including English.

When U.S. authorities revealed this summer that they were negotiating with a close associate of Mullah Omar, it was widely assumed to be Agha.

"All along, what the U.S. was asking for was an address, so to speak, or a point of contact with the Taliban, and it looks like they have developed that in the last year," says Anand Gopal, a journalist who has interviewed senior Taliban leaders.

Gopal says Agha is the logical person for the Americans to be speaking with. His identity is known, avoiding the possibility of another embarrassing hoax, like the Afghan who last year convinced American and British authorities that he was a Taliban negotiator. And Agha still has the trust of Mullah Omar, Gopal says.

"Maybe five or six people in the world actually have regular access to Omar. And it wouldn't be surprising that Agha would be one of those, just because of their history," Gopal says. "Because in the final days just before the government had fallen, most of the Taliban officials had fled and were hiding, but Agha was staying close to Mullah Omar, by his side. Those things matter, even today. It would make a lot of sense that somebody like Agha is involved in these talks."

Pakistan's Uncertain Role

Agha has given scattered interviews since he escaped Afghanistan at the end of 2001. He is rumored to have been arrested by Pakistani authorities last year along with other Taliban leaders.

The arrests first appeared to be a sign of Pakistani cooperation, but observers later concluded that Pakistan was arresting Taliban figures who had made peace overtures to the United Nations. The theory went that Pakistan's powerful spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, didn't want peace talks unless it was in control of them.

Observers say if Agha has been involved in talks in Qatar or in Europe with the Americans, it probably means Pakistan has signed off on the process and allowed him to travel. Still, some doubt Agha will offer any breakthrough.

Political commentator Waheed Mujda, who worked with Agha in the Taliban government, says Agha's importance is being exaggerated.

"He was a young man in that time; [he] was 25, now he is 35, maybe. And during these ten years it was impossible for him to go to university, or other places. Just, maybe, he studied some other religious books," Mujda says.

All Just Rumors?

What's more, Mujda says he doesn't believe there are real talks going on. Mujda says that Western sources are trying to spread rumors across the Taliban insurgency that the leadership is cutting a deal while the foot soldiers sacrifice themselves in battle.

"It's completely [a] lie, and Americans want to make problem inside [the] Taliban," Mujda says. "They want to make some Taliban armed people think, if the negotiation is held, why [should we fight]?"

Mujda says the Taliban have been conducting negotiations, but only regarding the release of prisoners they are holding. But journalist Gopal says it's the prisoner release talks that are cover for preliminary peace talks.

"It's important for the Taliban to maintain for their rank and file a sense that they're not willing to talk, so that there's no decrease in morale amongst their troops," Gopal says. "But the reality is that there are contacts through back channels that have been going on."

Even if talks have begun, they must first answer several questions. American officials say the insurgency is increasingly fragmented, and it's unclear just how much influence Mullah Omar still wields. If he is bringing the Taliban to the table, it remains to be seen whether the insurgents will be offering terms that are acceptable to Afghan society, or to the West.