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On 1 December, Netflix began streaming Farha (2021) worldwide, despite immense pressure directed at the platform to prevent its debut. The film is director Darin J. Sallam’s first full-length feature and chronicles the coming-of-age story of its heroine, Farha, a 14-year-old Palestinian teenager who possesses a voracious appetite for books and learning. Farha’s cultural background is that of a villager – her Arabic dialect infused with the authenticity often associated with Palestinian grandparents, particularly the generation born in the decade just before or that of the Nakba itself. Yet, what makes Farha a distinguished heroine isn’t necessarily her linguistic veracity, it is her bravery and her desire to pursue her education at a school in the neighbouring city. At the start of the film, she is seen at one with the land, collecting water from the local spring, eating figs straight from the communal trees and collecting almonds in her satchel, still intact and unpeeled. She goes through the motions of her chores in the village, but her mind often wanders into the literary worlds of the books she reads, novels gifted to her by her best friend Fareeda, who is from a city-dwelling family not far from the village from which Farha hails.

The first scenes of the film show Farha as a dreamer, a girl who urges her father, a man of mayoral standing, to register her in the city’s school. Her father is hesitant as he believes her economic livelihood is best secured through the arrangement of marriage and that the local Quran recitation learning groups provided by the Sheikh are a sufficient education. Still, Farha fights for her desire to learn and secures the support of many an ally in her extended family and community to finally convince her father. On the eve of the Nakba, he signs her enrolment certificate. Throughout the film, there are peripheral present-absent signifiers of just how troubling the situation in Palestine has become. Talk of resistance tactics and meetings between rebels and the officials hint that the historical events of the Nakba and its tragedy are on the cusp of eruption. These more politicised characters weave in and out of frames of the film, infiltrating the scenes with reminders, only to give way to Farha’s experience, which remains at the centre. Slowly but surely, the viewer’s understanding expands organically with Farha’s, and we see that this curious girl, who had very little understanding of the depth of this dire situation, is forced to contend with its brutality as a witness and as a survivor of violence, loss and dispossession. In fact, Farha’s father hides her in a closet where she remains trapped throughout the most violent moments that befall her village, and she is left alone to deal with the aftermath.

The film was produced by TaleBox, a production company co-founded by Sallam and producer Deema Azar. Ayah Jardaneh also served as the producer of the film. The film likewise received support from Laika Film & Television, Chimney, The Jordan Film Fund – Royal Film Commission, the Swedish Film Institute and the Red Sea Film Fund (an initiative of the Red Sea Film Festival). It remains a largely Jordanian-based initiative, highlighting the lived experience of Palestine and Palestinians, with support from European-based organisations. On a political level, Farha has depicted the tragedy of the Nakba for the first time through film and employs what the late Palestinian American scholar, Edward Said, has called the “permission to narrate” the Palestinian experience against many odds.

OPINION: Israel’s terror against Gaza’s children on Netflix

In response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and its aftermath, Said penned “Permission to Narrate” for the Journal of Palestine Studies in 1984. In it, he notes: “A disciplinary communications apparatus exists in the West both for overlooking most of the basic things that might present Israel in a bad light and for punishing those who try to tell the truth.” In short, Said’s argument can be summed up as such: despite declassified archives, countless human rights reports, international organisation inquiries and both official and ethnographic accounts of Palestinian plight and dispossession from Nakba to diaspora and from Nakba to military occupation, the Palestinians have been denied the right to narrate their own stories. They have also been denied the privilege of seeing their experience reflected back at them through film and literature and, by extension, preventing them from experiencing the catharsis that comes with artistic acknowledgement and representation. Farha has granted the Palestinian diaspora permission to narrate this story on one of the world’s largest entertainment streaming platforms. More importantly, Farha’s story has been recounted, in numerous iterations and manifestations, 700,000 times by the first generation of the dispossessed. The trauma of that memory remains forever fixed in the minds of the descendants of those who were forcibly displaced – a global diasporic population of nearly six million people and counting – approximately half of the total population of 12 million Palestinians across the historical homeland and outside of it. This population has been classified by the international community, despite its many failures towards it, as ipso facto stateless.

Palestinian’s culture and heritage is the best weapon against the Occupation – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

While on the one hand, Farha has been hailed by many viewers as an incredible feat, it comes as no surprise that the film has been targeted by Israeli officials and has caused outrage. Israel’s Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman issued a statement condemning Netflix, stating his belief that: “It’s crazy that Netflix decided to stream a movie whose whole purpose is to create a false pretence and cite against Israeli soldiers.” Though Farha has been screened globally in many film festivals and series since its debut in 2021, at venues such as Dubai-based Cinema Akil and intentional film festivals, including the Toronto Film Festival, the Red Sea Film Festival and others, it is its recent reincarnation on Netflix and its screening at Saraya, a theatre in Jaffa that has caused the most outrage towards the film. The Israeli government has threatened to act against Saraya and has encouraged a mass exodus of subscribers to Netflix. While many regional and international news networks hail the film for its artistic and historical merits, there is also a cacophony of discordant opinions about it, with publications like Fox News and The Times of Israel labelling the film as “terrible” or as “lies and libels”, whilst other major publishers such as The New York Times tiptoe around the film’s representations, selecting its words carefully to maintain its readership. Sites such as IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes have seen an onslaught of divided reviews: either five-star glowing recommendations from the film’s supporters or comments of rage and disbelief from its detractors.

In all the opinions emerging in the now global conversation surrounding this film, there has been no mention of Sallam’s other smaller work, The Parrot, a 2016 short film she co-directed with Amjad Al-Rasheed. In eighteen powerful minutes, The Parrot follows the story of a Tunisian Jewish family who arrives in Haifa and takes up residence in a home belonging to a Palestinian Greek-Orthodox family. Their clothing, blue-tinted walls and Christian iconography, which borrow heavily from the aesthetic and colour-scape of local churches, are left behind by the displaced family. The breakfast and tea on the table are still hot, and the new occupants, played by Tunisian actress Hend Sabry as Rachel and Palestinian citizen of Israel Ashraf Barhom as Mousa, are haunted by the spectre of the family that once lived there and by the constant echoes of the parrot that was left behind and calls out after the Palestinian boy who owned him asking for a kiss. The parrot also repeats “where are you?” and “why are you looking at me like that” incessantly.

OPINION: Healing with humour, Palestinian comedians strike a chord in occupied cities

Yet, for viewers who are unaware of the Nakba, this imagery and the story of Palestinian displacement remain subliminal. Instead, what takes centre stage is the othering of Eastern Jews who find themselves in Euro-Israeli modernity, one that they can’t quite figure out. As such, by the end of the short film, many viewers would engage in a conversation about the depiction of an intense encounter between the Tunisian Jewish family and their Ashkenazi neighbours, who look at the architecture and structure of the house in Haifa with envy, bewildered at how Eastern Jews, othered and orientalised, had acquired such luck. The film is as much a critique of ethnic relations among Israelis as it is about the Palestinian exodus, and, like Farha, it tells a tragic tale through beautifully directed cinematography and crafted set and costume designs. The pleasing nature of Sallam’s use of pastels, verdure and white stone almost works as an antidote to the harsh emotional blow to the nerves that her cinematic tales have delivered thus far and will continue to do in the future.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

A former leading Ukrainian official has been shot dead outside an American school in the Spanish capital Madrid, reports say.

The 51-year-old man, named by Ukrainian and Spanish sources as Andriy Portnov, had just dropped his children off at the school in the Pozuelo de Alarcón area of the city, reports say.

At least one unidentified attacker fired several shots at the victim before fleeing into a wooded area in a nearby public park, Spanish reports said.

Portnov had been an MP and deputy head in the administration of Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president ousted in 2014 after months of protests.

He had previously been an MP in Yulia Tymoshenko’s governing party.

He left Ukraine after the revolution only to return in 2019 after Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president.

He then left Ukraine again, and in 2021 was sanctioned by the US Treasury, which said he had been “widely known as a court fixer” who had taken steps to control the judiciary and undermine reform efforts.

The European Union had earlier imposed sanctions on Portnov, but he challenged the move in court and won the case.

It was not clear who was behind the shooting that took place at about 09:15 local time (07:15 GMT) on Wednesday, reportedly as children were still entering the school.

Police drones and a helicopter searched the area for a gunman who, according to witnesses, was a thin man in a blue tracksuit. Spanish reports suggested the gunman may have had at least one accomplice riding on a motorbike.

A similar gun attack took place in 2018, when a Colombian drug trafficker was fatally shot outside a British Council school a few kilometres away.

But the motive behind Wednesday’s attack is not yet known. Emergency services at the scene could only confirm that that Portnov had suffered several bullet wounds in the back and the head.

Portnov’s black Mercedes car was cordoned off and the school wrote to parents to confirm that all the students inside were safe.

Although Ukraine’s intelligence services have been linked to several killings in Russia and occupied areas of Ukraine, a fatal attack in Spain in February last year was linked to Russian hitmen.

The victim, a Russian helicopter pilot, was shot dead near Alicante, months after defecting to Ukraine.

Authorities in Kyiv said they had offered to protect Maxim Kuzminov in Ukraine, but he is believed to have moved to Spain’s south-east coast under a false identity.

Dagalo, who leads the rival Rapid Support Forces paramilitary, also announces a government as war ravages Sudan.

Sudan’s army chief and de facto head of state, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has appointed former United Nations official Kamil Idris as prime minister as part of changes to his sovereign council as the nation’s civil war grinds on into its third year.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed, critical infrastructure has been destroyed and more than 12 million people have been displaced as a result of the war, which shows no signs of stopping as vying leaders seek to consolidate their power.

“The chairman of the sovereignty council issued a constitutional decree appointing Kamil El-Tayeb Idris Abdelhafiz as prime minister,” a statement from Sudan’s ruling Transitional Sovereignty Council read on Monday.

Idris, a career diplomat, spent decades at the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organisation and was its director general from 1997 to 2008.

He also held various roles in Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and used to serve in the country’s permanent mission to the UN.

Idris, whose higher education was in international law and international affairs, also ran as an independent candidate in Sudan’s presidential election in 2010 against longtime military ruler Omar al-Bashir, who was later ousted in a 2019 coup.

The new prime minister replaces veteran diplomat Dafallah al-Haj Ali, who was appointed by al-Burhan less than a month ago as acting premier.

On Monday, al-Burhan also added two women to the council.

The military leader reappointed Salma Abdel Jabbar Almubarak and named Nowara Abo Mohamed Mohamed Tahir to the governing body.

The al-Burhan-led military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary headed by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, have been at war for more than two years after the two generals failed to agree on a plan to integrate their forces.

As al-Burhan tried to form an army-led government, Dagalo also announced the formation of a rival administration last month, shortly after signing a charter with allies in Kenya’s Nairobi.

The army, which holds areas in the central, eastern and northern parts of Sudan, has managed to claim some military victories in recent months, including taking control of the capital, Khartoum.

The RSF, which holds most of the western region of Darfur and some areas in the south with its allied militias, has been striking Port Sudan repeatedly this month to devastating effect.

Meanwhile, a worsening humanitarian crisis continues to engulf Sudan.

International organisations and some countries have warned of the risks of further escalating the conflict, including in cities like el-Fasher in Darfur that have served as humanitarian aid hubs.

DOWNIEVILLE, Calif. — Patrice Miller, 71, lived by herself in a small yellow house beneath towering mountain peaks on the edge of a burbling river in this Sierra County village. She doted on her cats and her exotic orchids, and was known to neighbors for her delicious homemade bread. One fall afternoon in 2023, after Miller had failed for several days to make her customary appearance at the town market, a store clerk asked authorities to check on her.

A short time later, a sheriff’s deputy found Miller’s lifeless body in her kitchen. Her right leg and left arm had been partially gnawed off. On the floor around her were the large paw prints of a bear.

Months after her death, officials would make a stunning disclosure, revealing that an autopsy had determined that Miller had likely been killed by the animal after it broke into her home. It marked the first known instance in California history of a fatal bear attack on a human.

But amid the contentious politics around black bears and other apex predators in California, not everyone accepts the official version of how she died.

“We don’t believe the bear did it,” said Ann Bryant, executive director of the Bear League in the Tahoe Basin. “And I will go on record as saying that. … We’ve never had a bear kill anybody.”

The story of Miller’s grisly end — and the increasingly heated battles around predators in California — have come roaring into the state Capitol this spring. Lawmakers representing conservative rural districts in the state’s rugged northern reaches argue that their communities are under attack, and point to Miller as one example of the worst that can happen. One solution they have pushed is changing the law to allow people to set packs of hunting dogs after bears to haze them. A similar measure has been floated — for now unsuccessfully — to ward off mountain lions considered a threat.

Wildlife conservation advocates are aghast. They say turning dogs on bears is barbaric and won’t make anyone safer. They contend the proposed laws don’t reflect a scientifically backed approach to managing wild populations but instead are pro-hunting bills dressed up in the guise of public safety. The real solution, they say, is for humans living near bears to learn to safely co-exist by not leaving out food or otherwise attracting them.

“These people are using [Miller’s death] to try to start hounding bears again,” said Bryant, who maintains that Miller, who was in poor health, must have died before the bear came into her home and devoured her. “She would roll in her grave if she knew that in her death people would create a situation where people were going to mistreat bears, because she loved bears.”

In a recent report, the Department of Fish and Wildlife estimates there are now 60,000 black bears roaming California and notes a marked increase in reports of human-bear conflicts.

(John Axtell / Nevada Department of Wildlife)

Founded in 1849, Downieville, population 300, is one of California’s oldest towns, and also one of its quaintest. Colorfully painted wooden buildings sit at the junction of two rivers, beneath majestic pines and mountain peaks.

Along with tourists, who flood in in the summer for rafting and mountain biking, the town also receives frequent visits from bears and mountain lions. More recently, wolves have arrived with deadly force, snatching domesticated cattle off the open pastures that stretch across the plains on the other side of the mountains east of town.

Miller wound up here about a decade ago, at the end of a rich, complicated life. She had worked in an oil refinery, and also as a contractor. She was a master gardener, expert at transplanting Japanese maples, according to her neighbor, Patty Hall. She was a voracious reader and a skilled pianist. But she also struggled with a variety of serious ailments and substance abuse, according to neighbors and officials.

Longtime residents in the area were used to the challenges of living among wild animals. But in the summer of 2023, Sierra County Sheriff Mike Fisher said he started getting an overwhelming number of calls about problem bears.

“We had three or four habituated bears that were constantly here in town,” said Fisher. “They had zero fear. I would say, almost daily, we were having to go out and chase these bears away, haze them.”

But bears have a sharp sense of smell, a long memory for food sources and an incredible sense of direction. If a tourist tosses them a pizza crust or the last bits of an ice cream cone, or leaves the lid off a trash can, they will return again and again, even if they are relocated miles away.

That summer, Fisher said, no matter what he did, the bears kept lumbering back into town. It was unlike anything he had experienced, he said, and he had grown up in Downieville. “A police car with an air horn or the siren, we would push the bear up out of the community. Fifteen minutes later, they were right back downtown,” he said.

Founded in 1849, Downieville, population 300, is one of California’s oldest towns and also one of its quaintest.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

And then there were the bears harassing Miller and her neighbors.

“There were three bears,” recalled Hall, who lives just up the hill from the home Miller rented. “Twice a night they would walk up and down our [porch] stairs. The Ring cameras were constantly going off.”

Fisher said some of Miller’s neighbors complained that she was part of the lure, because she was not disposing of her garbage properly. Some also alleged she was tossing food on her porch for her cats — and that the bears were coming for it. Miller’s daughter later told sheriff’s officials that bears were “constantly trying” to get into her house, and that “her mother had physically hit one” to keep it out. One particular bear, which Miller had nicknamed “Big Bastard,” was a frequent pest.

Fifty miles from Downieville, in the Lake Tahoe Basin, the Bear League was getting calls about Miller, too. The organization, which Bryant founded more than two decades ago, seeks to protect bears by helping residents coexist with them. This includes educating people about locking down their trash and helping to haze bears away from homes.

“We got calls [from her neighbors] that told us she had been feeding the bears, tossing food out to them, and let them come into her house,” Bryant said. She added that some thought, erroneously, that the Bear League was a government organization, and “maybe we had the ability to enforce the law” against feeding bears.

Hall, Miller’s friend, told The Times that Miller was not feeding bears. Still, the problems continued.

Eventually, officials with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife were called and told Miller she could sign a “depredation permit,” after which authorities could kill bears trying to get into her house. But Miller declined to do so, Fisher said.

In early November, Miller stopped showing up around town, prompting calls for a welfare check.

A little before 3 p.m. on Nov. 8, 2023, Deputy Malcolm Fadden approached Miller’s home, which was a short walk from the sheriff’s office. The security bars on the kitchen window had been ripped off. The window itself had been busted from the outside.

“I knocked on the door,” Fadden wrote in his report, but got no answer.

Patrice Miller was found dead in her rental cottage in November 2023. Bear advocates take issue with an autopsy report that said she probably was killed in a bear attack.

(Jessica Garrison / Los Angeles Times)

Through the window, he saw blood streaked across the living room floor. He took out his gun and burst into the house, where he was greeted by a giant pile of bear scat. He found Miller in the kitchen, her half-eaten body surrounded by food and garbage, which, Fadden wrote, had been “apparently scattered by bears.”

Fisher was horrified. Already frustrated at what he saw as the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s lackluster response to the escalating bear incursions that summer, now he wanted the bear that had fed on Miller to be trapped and killed.

He said the department told him that for the bear to be killed, “the person who lives at the house has to sign the [depredation] permit.” Fisher said he responded: “How many times do I have to tell you the person who lives at that house was eaten by the bear?”

This was the start of a long-running conflict between the sheriff and agency officials that would complicate the release of the autopsy findings about Miller’s death, and also convince Fisher that more aggressive steps were needed to protect his community.

Eventually, Fisher managed to get a depredation permit for the bear that had fed on Miller; his deputies tracked down her landlord, who as the homeowner could sign it. Wildlife officials set up a trap near Miller’s house, and in short order, a bear was caught.

But, according to Fisher, officials initially said it wasn’t the same bear. They said DNA tests showed that the bear who had eaten her was male, and the bear they had caught appeared to be female. They intended to release the bear, he said.

Fisher padlocked the cage, and threatened to call the media. In response, he said, wildlife officials sent a biologist, who determined the bear in the trap was male. It was shot that night.

At that point, few people, including Fisher, believed that the bear had actually killed Miller, as opposed to feeding on her after she died of natural causes. Though there are recorded instances of fatal black bear maulings in other U.S. states, they are rare, and there had been no reports of one in California. Fisher issued a news release saying that the death was under investigation, but that “it is believed that Patrice Miller passed away before a bear, possibly drawn by the scent or other factors, accessed the residence.”

After performing an autopsy, however, the pathologist on contract with Sierra County came to a different conclusion. She issued a report that found that Miller had “deep hemorrhage of the face and neck“ as well as “puncture injuries (consistent with claw ‘swipe’ or ‘slap’).” These injuries, she noted, were “characteristics more suggestive of a vital reaction by a living person.” In short: The pathologist found that Miller was probably killed by the bear.

Because of Fisher’s feud with Fish and Wildlife, that autopsy report, dated Jan. 4, 2024, wouldn’t become public for months.

Fisher said the state agency was refusing to provide him with copies of the DNA analysis of the bear that had been trapped in Miller’s yard. He wanted to see for himself that it matched the DNA evidence collected at her home, saying he hated the thought that a bear that had feasted on a person might still be roaming his town.

“I requested DNA from Fish and Wildlife, and they refused to provide it to me,” he said. “So I withheld the coroner’s report. We stopped talking.”

He said he verbally told department officials that the pathologist believed Miller had been killed by the bear — a seemingly noteworthy development. He said that officials responded: “I guess we’ll see when we get the report.”

In an email to The Times, state wildlife officials confirmed that Fisher had verbally shared the results of the autopsy report, but said they felt they needed to see the report to do their “due diligence before making an announcement about the first fatal bear attack in California.” The agency had sent an investigator to the scene after Miller’s death, who like Fisher and his deputies, thought the evidence suggested she had died of natural causes, said agency spokesperson Peter Tira.

By the time Fisher got the autopsy report, it was deep winter in the mountains, and bear activity decreased. Then came spring, and along with the blossoms, the bears came back to Downieville.

Bears were knocking over trash cans and breaking into cars. In May, residents on Main Street reported that a bear had broken into multiple houses, including one incursion that involved a bear standing over 82-year-old Dale Hunter as he napped on his couch.

A few days later, a bear tried to break into the cafeteria at Downieville High School while students were at school.

Fisher declared the bear a threat to public safety. Fish and Wildlife eventually issued a depredation permit, and the bear was shot.

That led to a story in the Mountain Messenger, the local paper. In it, the sheriff dropped a bombshell: “Miller was mauled to death after a black bear entered her home,” the paper reported. The story went on to say that the sheriff had made “numerous attempts” to inform Fish and Wildlife “about Miller’s death and more recent dangerous situations.”

After the story ran, state Sen. Megan Dahle, a Lassen County Republican who at the time served in the Assembly, set up a conciliatory meeting between Fish and Wildlife and Fisher. They have been meeting regularly ever since, Fisher said.

Fisher got his DNA results confirming that the bear trapped in Miller’s yard was the same bear that had eaten her. And Fish and Wildlife officials finally got a copy of the pathology report, which said Miller was probably alive when she encountered the bear.

The revelation made headlines around the state. “We’re in new territory,” Capt. Patrick Foy of Fish and Wildlife’s law enforcement division told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Bryant and other bear advocates found the release of such a significant finding so long after the fact confounding.

“I absolutely do not believe it,” Bryant said. If the bear had killed her, Bryant added, “the evidence should have been so clear, like immediately.”

“We don’t believe the bear did it,” Ann Bryant, executive director of the Bear League, says of Patrice Miller’s death. “We’ve never had a bear kill anybody.”

(Max Whittaker / For The Times)

The Downieville saga unfolded as bears seemed to be making news all over California.

To many, it seemed there were just many more bears encroaching on human settlements. A Fish and Wildlife report released last month estimated there are now 60,000 black bears roaming the Golden State, roughly triple the figure from 1998, the last time the department issued a bear management plan. That’s the highest population estimate for anywhere in the contiguous U.S., although the report also suggests that California’s bear population has been stable for the last decade.

In the Lake Tahoe area, where 50,000 people live year-round and tens of thousands more crowd in on busy tourist weekends, bears were breaking into houses and raiding refrigerators; they were bursting into ice cream shops and strolling along packed beaches.

State and local officials went into overdrive, trying to teach residents and tourists how to avoid attracting bears. The state set money aside for distribution of bear-proof trash cans and “unwelcome mats” that deliver a jolt of electricity if bears try to break into homes.

The Bear League will loan Tahoe Basin residents “unwelcome mats” that deliver a little jolt of electricity to bears if they try to break into homes.

(Max Whittaker / For The Times)

The Bear League stepped up its efforts. From a small office on Bryant’s property, the organization’s 24-hour hotline was ringing, and volunteers were rushing out with paintball guns to haze bears and to advise people on how to bear-proof their houses.

The tensions continued to escalate, nonetheless, between people who wanted to protect bears at all costs and those who wanted some problem bears trapped and relocated — or killed. In 2024, after a homeowner in the Tahoe area fatally shot a bear he said had broken into his home, many people were outraged that the Department of Fish and Wildlife declined to file charges.

Advocates also complained that the state has fallen behind in its efforts to help people and bears coexist. In recent years, the state had hired dedicated staff to help people in bear country, but the money ran out and some of those people were laid off, said Jennifer Fearing, a wildlife advocate and lobbyist.

“We have the tools to minimize human-wildlife conflict in California,” Fearing said. “We need the state to invest in using them.”

In Sierra County, the sheriff had come to a different conclusion. “We’ve swung the pendulum too far on the environmental side on these apex predators,” Fisher said.

Earlier this year, Fisher found common cause with newly elected GOP Assemblymember Heather Hadwick. “Mountain lions, bears and wolves are my biggest issue. I get calls every day about some kind of predator, which is crazy,” said Hadwick, who represents 11 northern counties.

In February, she introduced a bill, AB 1038, that would allow hunters to sic trained dogs on bears to chase them through the woods, but not kill them. While California has a legal hunting season for bears, it is strictly regulated; the use of hounds to aid the chase has been banned since 2013.

Hadwick argued that hounding bears would increase their fear of humans, which she said some are starting to lose: “We’re keeping them in the forest, where they belong.”

Bears have a long memory for food sources and an incredible sense of direction. If a tourist tosses them a pizza crust or leaves the lid off a trash can, they will return again and again.

(California Department of Fish and Wildlife)

Wildlife advocates showed up in force last month to oppose Hadwick’s bill in an Assembly committee hearing. Sending hounds after bears is cruel, they said. Plus, hounding bears in the woods would have no impact on the bears knocking over neighborhood trash cans and sneaking into ice cream stores.

Fisher testified in favor of the bill, and spoke of Miller’s death.

Lawmakers listened, some with stricken looks on their faces. But in a Legislature controlled by Democrats, Hadwick did not garner enough votes to send her bill on to the full Assembly; it became a two-year bill, meaning it could come back next year.

Fisher returned to Sierra County, where he has continued to advocate for locals to have more power to go after predators. The current situation, he said, is “out of control.”

For the last 18 months, the city of Rancho Palos Verdes has been struggling to address a worsening local emergency — the dramatic expansion of an ancient landslide zone that has torn homes apart, buckled roadways and halted utility services.

Triggered by a succession of heavy winter rains in 2023 and 2024, the ongoing land movement has upended the lives of residents and cast the city into financial uncertainty. Without significant outside aid, officials say they expect to spend about $37 million this fiscal year on emergency landslide mitigation — a sum nearly equal to the city’s annual operating budget.

Now, to make matters worse, the Trump administration has announced that it will cease funding the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants — a major pot of money the city hoped to use to finance a long-term prevention and stabilization plan.

“The BRIC program was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program,” read the administration announcement. “It was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.”

For the city of Rancho Palos Verdes, the action amounts to the likely loss of $16 million for stabilization work. It also marks a striking reversal in federal support for local slide mitigation efforts.

In September 2024, a campaigning Trump visited his nearby Trump National Golf Club to say that government needed to do more to help residents in the slide area. “The mountain is moving and it could be stopped, but they need some help from the government. So, I hope they get the help,” Trump said.

Last week, city officials again extended a local emergency declaration as the crisis continues to pose unprecedented strain on city finances.

“We are running out of money quickly,” Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor Dave Bradley said at a recent City Council meeting. “We are dramatically coming to the end of our rope to be able to [continue landslide mitigation efforts]. … We are spending major percentages on our total budget on this one issue.”

The majority of those allocated funds have gone toward a collection of new underground “de-watering” wells, which pump out the groundwater that lubricates landslide slip planes — a strategy that geologists have credited with helping to ease the movement in recent months.

Millions of dollars have also gone toward repeated repairs to Palos Verdes Drive South — which continues to crack and shift — as well as efforts to fill fissures, improve drainage and maintain important infrastructure, such as sewer and power lines.

While the city isn’t yet facing a major budget shortfall, its reserve funds have quickly dwindled over the last two years. By next fiscal year — which begins in July — the city expects to have only $3.5 million in unallocated capital improvement reserves, down from $35 million three years ago, according to city data. And while landslides have been the most pressing concern of late, city officials say they now face an estimated $80 million in other capital projects.

“Without a doubt, we need outside help for this landslide,” said Ramzi Awwad, the city’s public works director. He said the city is working to find and apply for other federal and state funding sources, but has run into roadblocks because landslides are not typically included within most disaster or emergency response frameworks.

“This is a disaster … very much exacerbated by severe weather and severe climate change,” Bradley recently testified before the California Assembly Committee on Emergency Management. He called the growing price tag for necessary response “unsustainable.”

Many areas of the Rancho Palos Verdes landslide complex — which covers more than 700 acres and includes about 400 homes — are still moving as much as 1.5 feet a month, damaging property and infrastructure, according to the city. Other sections that shifted several inches a week at the peak of movement in August 2024 have slowed or completely halted. City officials attribute those improvements to the ongoing mitigation projects as well as a much drier winter — but they say more work is needed to keep the area safe and accessible.

Officials argue the loss of FEMA funding could stymie long-term slide prevention efforts that were in the works for years before land movement drastically accelerated last year.

The Portuguese Bend Landslide Remediation Project, which calls for the installation of a series of water pumps called hydraugers, as well as other measures to keep water from entering the ground, was initially awarded a $23-million FEMA BRIC grant in 2023, Awwad said. The grant was later reduced to $16 million.

The project is separate from the city’s ongoing emergency response, but key to long-term stability in the area, Awwad said.

Rancho Palos Verdes officials dispute the administration’s assertion that the BRIC grant program is “wasteful and ineffective.” Instead, they say it represented a lifeline for a small city that has long dealt with landslides.

For decades, the city’s most dramatic landslide — the Portuguese Bend slide — has moved as much as 8.5 feet a year, or approximately an inch or two per week. Last summer, it was moving about a foot a week. Other nearby landslides, including Abalone Cove and Klondike Canyon, also saw dramatic acceleration last year, but those areas are not a part of the long-term stabilization plan.

Shown is a view of a large fissure in Rancho Palos Verdes’ Portuguese Bend neighborhood. Landslides have accelerated in the city following back-to-back wet winters in 2023 and 2024.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“Losing the BRIC funding will jeopardize the city’s ability to implement long-term efforts to slow the Portuguese Bend landslide and prevent the kind of emergency we are experiencing now from happening again,” Megan Barnes, a city spokesperson, said.

Because BRIC grants were earmarked for preventive measures, the city was unable to use the money for its emergency response. But in recent weeks, the city completed the first phase of the long-term project — planning, engineering and final designs — after FEMA approved $2.3 million for that initial work.

Officials say the city has yet to receive that portion of the funding, and it is now unclear whether it ever will.

“We are still seeking clarification on the next steps for what, if any, portion of the BRIC grant may be available,” Barnes said. “We continue to strongly urge our federal, state and county partners to recognize the urgency of this situation and continue to support the city in protecting our residents and vital infrastructure.”

Awwad said it’s not just the local residents who benefit from such stabilization efforts; it also helps the thousands of motorists who use Palos Verdes Drive South and thousands more residents who rely on the county-run sewer line that runs alongside the road.

“This is a regional issue,” Awwad said.

Barnes said the city is considering applying to FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program for the project, but securing state or federal funding for stabilization projects has been a challenge.

After the Biden administration declared the 2023-2024 winter storms a federal disaster, the city applied to FEMA for over $60 million in disaster reimbursements, linking its landslide mitigation work to the heavy rainfall. But FEMA officials rejected almost all of the city’s request.

The city has appealed that decision, but it seems unlikely federal officials will reverse course. In a recent letter to FEMA about the appeal, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services recommended the appeal not be granted because the landslides “were unstable prior to disaster” and therefore not a “direct result of the declared disaster.”

“Cal OES agrees with [the city] that the winter storms… may have greatly accelerated the sliding,” the letter said. “However … the pre-existing instability dating back to 2018 makes that work ineligible per FEMA policy. “

The most significant outside funding the city has received has come from Los Angeles County. Supervisor Janice Hahn secured $5 million for the landslide response — more than $2 million of which has been distributed to homeowners for direct assistance through $10,000 payments. The county’s flood control district also allocated the city $2 million to help cover costs preparing for the rainy season.

In 2023, the city also received $2 million from Congress after U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) helped secure the funds for landslide remediation.

The city’s most dramatic financial support — if it comes through — would be a $42-million buyout program that was awarded last year by FEMA. With that money, city officials expect a buyout of 23 homes in the landslide zone, 15 of which have been red-tagged, or deemed unlivable. FEMA has yet to allocate those funds, Barnes said, but even if it does, none of the money would go toward slide mitigation or prevention.

In the face of such difficulties, city officials have thrown their support behind a bill that could change how the state classifies emergencies.

Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-Rolling Hills Estates) introduced AB 986, which would add landslides as a condition that could constitute a state of emergency — a change that could free up a pool of state funds for Rancho Palos Verdes.

He called the bill “a common sense proposal” after seeing what the Rancho Palos Verdes landslide zone has been dealing with, but similar bills in the past have failed.

“The Palos Verdes peninsula … has been witnessing what I call a slow-moving train wreck,” Muratsuchi testified at an Emergency Management Committee hearing last month. “Homes are being torn apart. … The road is being torn apart, utilities are being cut off. By any common sense definition: a natural disaster.”