Conservation
Seagrass meadows feed the turtles and dugongs and store carbon faster than a rainforest. In Gladstone Harbour they are being replanted beside new oyster reefs, in a trial paid for by an insurance company's foundation and run by the people who know the water best.
One good story, from the earth to the sea.
Regenerative farming has plenty of believers and not enough Australian evidence. A five year trial led by farmers' own groups, with CSIRO measuring, sets out to find what works in old soils and unpredictable rain.
Weeping Myall woodland once ran across the western plains and most of it was cleared for cropping and grazing. On a property near Coonamble, a farming company is planting almost a thousand hectares of it back, with the grazing to follow once the trees are up.
Orangutans live mostly alone, which leaves their young short of playmates. Fifteen years of watching mothers and infants in a Bornean forest shows the mothers fixing that themselves, walking further and eating less so the children can wrestle.
A national network to find out where the Christmas beetles went, 25,000 native plantings on Ngarrindjeri Country, and a shorebird patrol at Shark Bay. Five projects shared $150,000 this week, and every one of them is the patient kind.
Before December, the stretch of Interstate 25 between Larkspur and Monument averaged about one serious crash with an animal a day. Then the biggest wildlife bridge on the continent opened above it, and the elk started using it.
Sit in your favourite outdoor spot for twenty minutes, write down the birds you see, and press submit. That is the whole job, and last year nearly 64,000 people did it and counted more than five million birds.
Two stations on the Gulf Plains and one on Cape York Peninsula, almost 396,000 hectares of wetlands, waterholes and savanna woodland, are joining Australia's protected area network. Queensland bought them with The Nature Conservancy and two philanthropic partners.
Mala, the rufous hare wallaby, vanished from the wild in 1991. Twenty four were brought home to Uluru in 2005. This May, Anangu, Mala Rangers and park staff counted them at nearly 500.
Weeping Myall woodland once ran across the western plains and most of it was cleared for cropping and grazing. On a property near Coonamble, a farming company is planting almost a thousand hectares of it back, with the grazing to follow once the trees are up.
A national network to find out where the Christmas beetles went, 25,000 native plantings on Ngarrindjeri Country, and a shorebird patrol at Shark Bay. Five projects shared $150,000 this week, and every one of them is the patient kind.
Two stations on the Gulf Plains and one on Cape York Peninsula, almost 396,000 hectares of wetlands, waterholes and savanna woodland, are joining Australia's protected area network. Queensland bought them with The Nature Conservancy and two philanthropic partners.
Mala, the rufous hare wallaby, vanished from the wild in 1991. Twenty four were brought home to Uluru in 2005. This May, Anangu, Mala Rangers and park staff counted them at nearly 500.
Orangutans live mostly alone, which leaves their young short of playmates. Fifteen years of watching mothers and infants in a Bornean forest shows the mothers fixing that themselves, walking further and eating less so the children can wrestle.
Before December, the stretch of Interstate 25 between Larkspur and Monument averaged about one serious crash with an animal a day. Then the biggest wildlife bridge on the continent opened above it, and the elk started using it.
Fly a laser scanner over the rainforest of Acre in western Brazil and the ground underneath gives up its secrets: ring after ring of ditches and banks, dug by a people archaeologists now call the Aquiry, who may have numbered three million at their height.
America's rarest wolf lives wild in one corner of North Carolina, fewer than forty animals in all. In April three pups born at a zoo in Missouri were placed in a wild mother's den at seven days old. Months later, the cameras found all three alive and growing.
Regenerative farming has plenty of believers and not enough Australian evidence. A five year trial led by farmers' own groups, with CSIRO measuring, sets out to find what works in old soils and unpredictable rain.
Paaru Natural Products was founded by three Malyangapa and Barkandji women on medicinal plant knowledge handed down through their mothers' lines. With CSIRO they have turned it into a process six times more efficient, and the plant's identity never left the room.
For sixteen hours in late August, a herd of white lipped peccaries travelled by truck, by boat and finally on people's shoulders into Piedras Blancas National Park, where the forest has been missing them for eighteen years.
The bogong moth had its strongest return to the Alps since its numbers fell away in 2017, and this spring thousands of people will help find out where it goes.
In the far south of Mexico, the largest tropical forest reserve in the country is held together by the villages living inside it.
Gunlom is the waterfall everyone knows, an 85 metre drop with a natural pool at the top looking out over Kakadu. It closed in 2019 and stayed closed for almost six years. On 1 July it opened again, and the reason it took that long is the best part of the story.
An early start from the ferry, a family of brush turkeys, cockatoos free falling out of the canopy, and a swim I could not resist. Five special places, one short ferry ride from home.
Five hours south of Lima, a lagoon ringed by palms and sand dunes is a regional conservation area with a new five year plan, a citizens' committee and a monthly top up from a well, while a woman nearby has planted tens of thousands of the desert's own trees.
We would love you to pass our stories along. Send one to someone who wants to feel uplifted today, because hope grows when it is shared. And if our stories brighten your week, you are very welcome to support us. It is what keeps the whole thing running.
