TOP FIVE BAT-FACTS WE BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW

Halloween is right around the corner, and that means that it's finally time for bats to be in the spotlight (outside of Gotham City). There's a lot to love about these diverse, echolocating, occasionally-blood-drinking creatures -- and even more to learn. Check out the top five facts about bats they didn't teach you in school. TOP FIVE BAT-FACTS WE BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW 1. Bats help keep humans safe and well-fed. Bats are an incredibly diverse group of animals -- with more than 1,200 different species, they make up a fifth of all mammals -- and they earn their living in all sorts of ways. Many bats prey on mosquitos and other insects that are harmful to people. (Thanks, bats!) And bats pollinate critical (and delicious) crops including bananas, mangoes, figs, and cashews. (Thanks AGAIN, bats!) 2. A group of bats is called a "colony" -- and the largest can comprise as many as 20 million bats.  That's...a lot of bats. The largest Mexican free-tailed bat colony in the world (as many as 20 million bats!) roosts at Bracken Bat Cave, about 30 miles outside of San Antonio, Texas. Together with the City of San Antonio and Bat Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy recently acquired a 1,521-acre property adjacent to Bracken Cave -- one of many Conservancy projects nationwide devoted to protecting essential habitat and restoring bat populations. You can help protect threatened landscapes and the wildlife that depend on them by making a donation to The Nature Conservancy. 3. Bats can be cute. Super cute. Look at this guy: 4. The greatest threat to bats isn't garlic, or wooden stakes, or even sunlight. It's a fungus -- a terrible, terrible fungus.  In the past few years, a fungus-related illness called White Nose Syndrome has wiped out millions of bats across the U.S. and Canada. It can afflict an entire cave of bats -- entering their tiny bodies and kicking their metabolisms into overdrive until they starve to death. The Nature Conservancy is leading the search for a cure for White Nose Syndrome, and Conservancy-funded researchers have recently made major breakthroughs. Thanks to these efforts, some bats have already been successfully treated and released back into the wild. We have a long way to go -- but with continued support from our members, there is now real hope that populations will be able to recover before it's too late. 5. Bats can be altruistic. Nobody gets a bad rap like the unfairly vilified vampire bat. Yes, these tiny creatures feed on blood -- but they have also been shown to be incredibly generous. If a vampire bat doesn't find a meal on his nightly hunt, his more-successful neighbors will keep him from starving by sharing their own food. Some might find vampire bats feasting on regurgitated blood a little icky -- but we think it's actually very sweet. It's nice to know that generosity is part of what keeps bats healthy and thriving. If you're feeling inspired to share, post this list of fascinating bat-facts on Facebook andTwitter. And one last thing: You may not be able to feed a thirsty vampire bat directly, but you canprotect incredible wildlife and restore natural places by making a donation to The Nature Conservancy today. PHOTOS: A pallid bat catches a scorpion © Merlin Tuttle/Bat Conservation International. Mexican Free-tailed bats leaving Bracken Bat Cave at sunset © Jacqueline Ferrato/TNC. Little brown bat © Ann Froschauer/USFWS. Brown bat release © Katie Gillies/Bat Conservation International. Desmodus rotundus, Sangayan Island, Paracas National Reserve © Wikimedia Commons. Find Us On: Nature.org | Where We Work | How We Work | Science in Action | Donate | Photos & Videos | About Us The Nature Conservancy Holds High Charity Ratings Our Ratings | Terms of Use | Privacy Statement Copyright © 2015 | The Nature Conservancy 4245 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 100, Arlington, Virginia 22203-1606 Questions or Comments? Call us toll-free at (800) 628-6860

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A Decent Living for Home Caregivers—And Their Clients

A Decent Living for Home Caregivers—And Their Clients

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At-home caregivers are among the least protected and most undervalued workers in the U.S. Low federal reimbursement rates lay at the heart of the problem. 

By Heather Rogers

This article appears in the Summer 2015 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.

Laddie Read, a 69-year-old with cerebral palsy, can’t get up without help. When he awoke one morning last April expecting to find his home-care aide and instead saw a complete stranger at the foot of his bed, Read was terrified. “I had no idea who was there,” he recalls. “If you were bedridden and somebody just walked into your house,” he says, “how would you feel?”

Read requires help to move from room to room, get into his wheelchair, use the bathroom, dress, and bathe. He can’t cook, shop, or clean the house. To assist with all these tasks, the Portland, Oregon, resident relies on home-care aides seven days a week. It turned out that the stranger was a replacement. His usual aide couldn’t come in—but no one bothered to tell Read. While abruptly losing caregivers isn’t uncommon in Read’s decades of using the service, it was no less upsetting. The new aide couldn’t understand what Read was saying—his caregivers must be trained to understand his severely impaired speech—and had no clear idea of how to perform the job. “It felt like hell,” Read said, speaking through an interpreter. “When this happens, my whole world stops.”

Thousands of people dependent on home-care workers face similar disruptions every day. Turnover in the industry is extreme. In 2014, the median rate topped 60 percent, as documented in an industry study—that’s six out of ten caregivers leaving the job every year. It’s not surprising that so many workers flee the profession, which has intense physical and emotional demands—and poverty wages. The median earnings are less than $21,000 a year. That’s well below the annual median across all occupations, which is almost $35,000, and just above the federal poverty line for a family of three. Earnings are so low that about half of all at-home caregivers are on some form of means-tested public assistance, including Medicaid and food stamps, according to the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, a research organization.Why is pay so bad for these workers? One explanation is that home-care aides comprise several traditionally marginalized groups. About 90 percent of home-care workers are women; almost half are of color. And since the job doesn’t require a high school diploma, most have low education levels.America’s chronic devaluing of care work, be it for children, the ill, disabled, or aging, reinforces a vicious cycle of low status and low pay.So entrenched is the discriminatory view of caregiving that the country’s most important labor law deliberately shuts these workers out. When the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was passed in 1938, it transformed the lives of American workers by setting the eight-hour day and establishing other basic protections, including extra pay for overtime. However, the law excluded domestic caregivers. Astonishingly, it still does. As a result, home-care aides do not even have the right to receive minimum wage and overtime pay.

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KEEPING Shell out of the Arctic

Shell’s already proven it doesn’t have 

what it takes to 

drill in the Arctic Ocean. 

Help prevent an oil spill that would threaten wildlife like polar bears and endangered bowhead whales by 

keeping Shell out of the Arctic.

The TRUTH will set you FREE.