Tributes to former Baildon teacher killed by elephant
Mr Temple said Ms Easton's impact on "generations of pupils" in the local community had been "profound".He said her "skill, tenacity and determination to ensure all young people had the opportunity to succeed" had been admired by "countless colleagues".He added: "Janice will be fondly remembered by all in the Titus Salt School and wider communities."Local police chief in Zambia, Robertson Mweemba, said the two women had been part of a guided safari group who were walking in the park when the elephant charged towards them at high speed."They were moving to other camps when the elephant charged from behind. "We are really sorry that we have lost our visitors," Mr Mweemba said.
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Sky News
15 hours ago
- Sky News
Fundraiser for siblings who drowned while on holiday in Spain reaches £40,000
A fundraiser for two siblings who drowned off eastern Spain during a family holiday has reached £40,000. Ameiya and Ricardo Junior Parris, aged 13 and 11, died on Tuesday evening after getting into difficulty off Llarga beach in Salou, Catalonia. Their father Ricardo tried to rescue them, but he also got into difficulty and was unconscious when he was pulled from the water. He was later released from hospital with a concussion. Ricardo Senior and his partner, Shanice Del-Brocco, 31, were staying at the Hotel Best Negresco right by the beach with their six children when tragedy struck. The construction worker from Birmingham had taken their two oldest children for one final swim while Shanice had taken the younger ones back to the hotel. "They'd gone out. They were being sensible. They're very good swimmers," the children's aunt, Kayla Del-Brocco, said. "They knew it was late. However, they'd been doing this every day on holiday, so that day was no different. They didn't go out far, but the current was just too strong and pulled them." A hotel worker saw the siblings struggling in the water and called for help. When Shanice returned to the beach, emergency services were already at the scene, with Junior taken away in a helicopter. "It's breaking (Ricardo), if I'm honest, because he was in the water, and I know he said things to my sister like: 'I had him, I had Joby in my arms, and we got smacked up the rocks, and that's the last thing I remember,'" Shanice's sister said. Ricardo Senior suffered a "nasty concussion and some bumps and batters", Ms Del-Brocco said, adding that he was the first to be rescued. The couple were unable to see their children's bodies until Thursday at the mortuary and are now waiting for them to be repatriated to the UK, which they were told "could be anything from seven to 15 days", Ms Del-Rocco said. "They are just numb. They're holding each other up and keeping it together for the little ones at the minute; going through the motions and desperately waiting to come home now." The GoFundMe page to help cover the cost of repatriating the bodies of Ameiya and Ricardo Junior, which was set up by her cousin, has already raised around £40,000, which Ms Del-Rocco described as "phenomenally overwhelming". "Maya was intelligent, thoughtful, and growing into a strong young woman. Ricardo Junior was playful, kind, and always smiling. They brought so much love, laughter, and energy into the lives of everyone around them," the fundraising page reads. "Their absence has left an unbearable silence not just for their parents, but for their whole family, who were incredibly close and shared an unbreakable bond." Ms Del-Brocco said that Ameiya and Junior, who were in Years 7 and 8 at North Birmingham Academy, were doting older siblings, with their mother describing them as "hilarious, sensitive and loving - the best big brother and sister anyone could want". Their aunt said that Ameiya, a talented runner with ambitions of going to the Olympics, was "unapologetically just herself" and "driven by being unique". Ricardo Junior was a "very, very special one-of-a-kind character" who wanted to become a famous YouTuber. A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: "We are supporting the family of two British children who have died in Spain and are in contact with the local authorities."
The Independent
a day ago
- The Independent
The struggle to protect wildlife around the world as Trump's aid cuts start to bite
Zambia's Lower Zambeezi National Park faced more than its fair share of problems since it first opened in 1983. Lying next to porous borders with Mozambique and Zimbabwe, the park – which spans more than 1,000 square miles – became a hub for illegal activities such as trophy poaching, bushmeat poaching, illegal mining of gold, and unregulated fishing along the Zambezi River. With cases of human- wildlife conflict rising, and gunshots heard across the park most nights, in 1994 groups including safari operators and local communities around the park established the charity Conservation Lower Zambezi (CLZ) to help government authorities protect the The Lower Zambezi National Park, which is home to an abundance of wildlife including lions, leopards, more than 400 different kinds of bird species, and numerous other endangered species. Today, CLZ has a team of 100 who work 365 days a year to protect the park. More than half of those employees are community scouts from the local communities that work alongside government rangers on patrols of up to two weeks at a time, following tracks or tip-offs as part of regular, canine, aerial, or marine units. Whether it's by sniffing out bushmeat from the villages that surround the park, removing poachers snares, or scouting out signs of illegal mining, CLZ's work ensures the park is both a safe haven for wildlife, and a key economic asset for Zambia. But decades of hard-won progress is now under direct threat from cuts to US overseas aid. Specifically, frozen financing from the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has left a $900,000 (£680,000) hole in CLZ's finances over the next four years. The past few months have left the charity 'scrambling' to fill gaps where they can, says fundraising manager Frances Hannah, including by cutting the number of patrols that it carries out and reducing activities in other programme areas. 'Since the freeze came in January – we've been playing chess with our funding to cover gaps where we can' says Hannah. 'The walls are closing in, and I don't think anyone wants to discuss what kind of cuts we may have to make next, because it is not going to be good.' The Lower Zambezi National Park is only a safe haven for wildlife because of the 'support to the government and the constant surveillance' that CLZ and Rangers are able to carry out, Hannah continues. But the threats to the park remain fundamentally the same as when it opened: 'If you suddenly can't be putting out 10 patrol teams a week, and you're only putting out six, then there are going to be areas that are going to suffer,' she says. CLZ's story is far from unique. Analysis of leaked USAID files analysed by The Independent show that biodiversity-supporting, multi-year grants in Africa worth more than $300 million were cancelled after contract terminations were confirmed in March - and that's not even taking into account other conservation grants from agencies like USFWS and the State Department, which have also been ravaged. Numerous organisations spoken to by The Independent, many of whom are continuing to do so anonymously over fear of possible reprisals from the US government, have described the devastating impacts that these cuts have had over the past six months. Their stories reveal the tenacity of aid workers in their drive to keep programmes going ever since the first 'stop work' order on all foreign assistance was first issued by the Trump Administration on January 24 - and also reveal the very real impacts that aid cuts have had on global efforts to protect and restore the world's wild places., One conservation worker at a National Park in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, described how the park lost a grant worth north of $5m 'functionally overnight'. Meanwhile, Charlie Mayhew, founder and CEO of British Conservation charity Tusk, told The Independent that a total of 40 Tusk project partners lost a total of $29.5m in funding. 'They're all having to make immediate savings and quite drastic cost-cutting exercises,' says Mayhew. 'Rural communities are being devastated by job redundancies, with one employed individual likely to be supporting up to 10 family members.' Christof Schenck, Executive Director of the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS), is similarly reeling from major cuts to his own organisation's finances. The FZS is one of the world's most active conservation organisations, with an annual budget of around $50m and operations in 18 countries, termination of FZS's USAID grant creates a $4.5m budget hole between now and 2027, while termination of its USFWS grant leaves another $4m gap between now and 2029. 'We have worked very well with US aid agencies for many years, and we were always impressed by how effective their conservation programs have been,' says Schenck. 'We understand that aid could be more efficient, and more impact-orientated, but the current approach is hurting many successful projects, and we are very worried about the cuts.' FZS carries out crucial conservation efforts in a number of countries, including law enforcement, surveillance of highly endangered species, and managing human-wildlife conflict. While the charity has so far made some employees redundant, and cut some programmes, it is largely sustaining itself by tapping into reserves that the charity has amassed over many years. They know that they will not be able to keep doing this indefinitely, but simply terminating conservation work is not really an option: 'We can't just stop now and leave, for example, black rhino populations or elephants without any protection,' says Schenck. US government funding represented a particularly vital lifeline for conservation programmes in Africa because it is both a region of the world, and sector, that struggles to attract required levels of investment. The UN estimates that $200bn per year is needed globally to halt and reverse biodiversity loss - but only $154bn is currently mobilised. Africa, in particular, only receives around three per cent of global biodiversity finance, despite hosting nearly 30 per cent of the world's biodiversity and nearly 20 per cent of global forest cover. But while US money might have been crucial for African conservation programmes, for the aid agencies themselves, the money was a drop in the ocean. The $375.4m that USAID provided to biodiversity projects in 2023, according to information submitted to Congress last December, represented just 0.6 per cent of the agency's $60bn overall budget. Meanwhile, the roughly $50m that was directed to USFWS's key international programme streams represented around one per cent of that agency's overall budget. Conservationists spoken to by The Independent are at pains to stress that the impact of cuts reaches far beyond just the animals. Firstly, there's the loss of vital jobs and investment, and the programmes enabling rural people to have a better quality of life . When you factor in the impact of aid cuts to non-wildlife-focused programmes in rural areas, which will leave people more likely to exploit the natural environment to survive, the crisis is clear. William Peshut, from the The Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies Association (MMWCA) in Kenya, is a man who understands that first point very well. In Kenya, only around 10 per cent of the country's landmass are technically legally 'protected' - but a further 16 per cent of the country is categorised as wildlife 'conservancies', which are areas managed by rural herders and farmers, where they have learnt to coexist with wild animals including elephants, giraffes and buffalo. MMWCA plays a vital role in overseeing 25 conservancies spread around the Maasai Mara National Park, which together cover some 700 square miles of land. Key to doing this is supporting communities so that they feel willing to live alongside wildlife, whether through educational programmes to deter human-wildlife conflict or by encouraging gender parity in conservation work, as well as by the employment of rangers in the conservancies, and the lobbying of the Kenyan government for greater legislative support. 'It's all about helping communities co-exist with the natural landscape, and also helping them generate as much income as possible from conservation work,' says Peshut, who adds that the work has been so successful that wildlife numbers are actually higher in the conservancies than in many parts of the park. MMWCA is now facing a major funding gap, with Peshut revealing that a USAID grant running between 2024 and 2028, which was worth $6.5m dollars, has been cancelled, with that total representing 72 per cent of MMWCA's budget. The charity has been making do on reserves from previously-allocated grants so far - but already programmes are being reorganised and plans are being put on hold, including a plan to establish a major new wildlife corridor to the east of the park, which has now been cancelled. Kaddu Sebunya, CEO at the African Wildlife Foundation, a Nairobi-based international conservation charity working across 17 African countries, details how he believes that aid cuts to non-wildlife-focused programmes are also having a major impact on wildlife conservation efforts. 'Aid cuts to health programmes, agricultural programmes, or generally any rural development programmes are going to lead people to depend more on natural resources in the area, which will lead to deforestation, and greater competition between agriculture and habitats,' he says. 'Already, more than 70 per cent of Africans depend on agriculture as a main source of income, and over 70 per cent depend on wood for their energy,' Sebunya continues. 'Those percentages are both going to increase as aid cuts push people out of stable work and healthcare programmes, and that is a major worry for us.' Cuts to healthcare programmes is having very real impacts on conservation programmes in other ways too: One conservation charity told The Independent that in Southern Africa several conservation programmes had reported concerns that 'quite a lot of staff' were on antiretroviral medication for HIV that have now been cut, creating new challenges around staffing ranger programmes. Sebunya - whose own organisation lost the equivalent of 15 per cent of its annual budget to US overseas aid cuts - sees the problem facing conservation programmes right now as not just just stemming from the decisions of the Trump administration, but also from a long-term failure of the African governments to develop sustainable business models around conservation. 'We have not tied our conservation work to the economic aspirations of Africans, but instead only tied it to cultural aspects of Africans,' he says. 'This means that our sector has always been funded by foreign NGOs and foreign governments.' It leads to a situation such as has happened in Kenya, Sebunya continues, where the government there has increased the health and education budgets, but not the conservation budget. 'It's a failure on our part that we have not been able to prove that if conservation does not succeed, it is a sustainability issue, it is a health issue, and it is a rural economy issue,' he says. 'And if it is a rural economy issue it becomes an urban economy issue, because rural people will then come to the cities.' The good news, believes Sebunya, is that whenever there is a crisis such as now, there is an opportunity to change the narrative - and already there are striking stories of organisations looking to adapt to the new status quo. In Kenya, Peshut says that MMWCA is currently in negotiations with the local government for 10 per cent of entrance fees charged at the gate of the national park to be placed in a 'Wildlife Conservancies Fund', in order to support the activities of the charity. MMWCA is also negotiating with landowners in the conservancies for greater financial contribution to MMWCA's activities, while negotiations are also ongoing for the local government to offer its own direct financial support to MMWCA. 'The future is not going to be easy, but we are doing all we can to boost our own fundraising efforts before our grant financing runs out,' Peshut says. 'What we do know is we absolutely cannot stop our activities in the conservancies, as that would be a total disaster.' But while organisations will naturally look to remain optimistic, and seek alternative routes forward where they can, there is no denying the gravity of what has befallen conservation groups this year. 'In my more than 40 years in conservation, I have never known anything like this: One contract party cutting off millions of dollars of funding practically overnight,' says FZS's Schenck. 'Now, a time window is closing for us and other organisations, and the crisis gets deeper by day.' He adds: 'While our politicians might be increasingly reluctant to do so, we continue to see a responsibility from the Global North to support conservation. We have much more money, with economies built on fossil fuels, and therefore owe it to them to help.'
The Sun
a day ago
- The Sun
‘In heaven now': Heartbreaking words of six-year-old after siblings, 11 and 13, drowned on ‘last swim' on Spain holiday
THE heartbreaking words of a six-year-old whose siblings drowned on a "final swim" in Spain have been revealed. Ameiya Del Brocco, 13, and her younger brother Ricardo Junior, 11, tragically died on Tuesday while on holiday at Llarga beach in Salou, near Tarragona. 6 6 6 6 The pair - affectionately known to their loved ones as Maya and Jubs - were swept away by fierce currents as their devastated dad tried to save them. But their six-year-old brother Casius - who was also on the holiday with the two parents and six children - is now tragically having to process the deaths. Casius is said to have told his mother: "Did you know Maya and Jubs are in heaven now? Juby went to heaven in a helicopter". The heartbreaking words were told to the Daily Mail by his aunt Macalia Del Brocco after Ricardo Jnr was airlifted to hospital. Macalia said: "So that's his understanding of it, which is bittersweet, because that was what he saw. "And it's beautiful that he thinks that's what happened, but very sadly tragic at the same time." She said Ameiya and Ricardo Jnr had asked for a final swim on Tuesday after spending the day on the beach and before returning to the hotel for the night. But the children got into trouble while swimming, with their dad going into the water afterwards to try and save them and being overwhelmed himself. Emergency crews were called and pulled the trio from the water with Ricardo Snr unconscious having swallowed water. She said Ricardo Jnr was airlifted to hospital while medics desperately tried to save the father and daughter at their hotel. Boy, 17, dies on beach after being buried alive in hole in sand he dug Sadly, the two children could not be revived, but Ricardo Snr pulled through despite swallowing a lot of water. Macalia paid tribute to her niece and nephew from Erdington, Birmingham. She said of Ameiya: "She is very, very athletic. Very determined individual. When she wanted something she was adamant she was going to get it. She was very as a character, she was very sarcastic and humorous." While she said Ricardo Jnr would do "anything" to earn a few extra quid. 6 6 Macalia said: "Junior loved doing odd jobs. Frequently in the neighbor's garden, doing her hedges for her, just to earn a few extra quid. He was quite the Dell Boy." A GoFundMe page has been launched to support the grieving family, set up by cousin Holly Marquis-Johnson to cover the costs of repatriation and funerals. Holly wrote: 'During what was meant to be a joyful family holiday in Salou, Spain, Ameiya and Ricardo Junior, lovingly known to their family and friends as Maya and Jubs, heartbreakingly lost their lives in a tragic incident at sea. 'Two beautiful, bright, and deeply loved children, taken far too soon. "The pain their family is feeling is unimaginable. 'This fundraiser has been created to help ease some of the financial burden the family is now facing, covering the costs of bringing Maya and Jubs home to the UK and giving them the dignified farewell they deserve. 'We know that no amount of money can make this right. But together, we can help carry some of the weight.' The children's GoFundMe appeal has already raised more than £30,000 of its £15,000 target. Ameiya and Ricardo's haunting final photo showed them smiling on the sand just hours before the tragedy. Local officials confirmed a yellow warning flag was flying at the time to signal rough sea conditions. But lifeguards had clocked off at 8pm — with the alarm raised just before 8.50pm. A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: 'We are supporting the family of two British children who have died in Spain and are in contact with the local authorities.'
