Civil society milestones from around the world

Once extinct in the wild, more than 600 scimitar-horned oryx now roam Chad

By Peter Schulte / September 28, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

The scimitar-horned oryx, a pale, long-horned Sahara antelope, has become a test case for whether captive-bred animals can relearn life in the wild. Researchers tracking the herd released in Chad since 2016 see early signs the animals are rebuilding social bonds and migration knowledge lost when wild herds vanished, and the same approach now helps other endangered antelope like the addax. Still, the species remains Endangered, and conservationists say securing its future is unfinished work.

180+ organizations join massive effort to restore 4.4M acres of Brazil’s Cerrado

By Peter Schulte / September 24, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

The Cerrado gets a fraction of the attention the Amazon does, despite being the world’s most biodiverse savanna — and losing more than half its native vegetation already. The coalition working to change that has built real infrastructure from scratch: seed banks, nurseries, trained technicians, land agreements. A separate Cerrado finance fund has quadrupled its investment in a year, growing from 32 to 122 participating farms. Neither effort has finished the job. But real capacity and real capital are both now flowing toward saving it.

Burkina Faso’s malaria vaccine rollout cuts cases 32%, deaths 44%

By Peter Schulte / September 21, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

Malaria has killed more people in Burkina Faso than almost any other disease, hitting children under five hardest. The country’s malaria vaccine rollout, scaled to all 70 health districts by mid-2025, helped drive a historic single-year decline: total cases fell from over 10.8 million to 7.3 million, while deaths dropped 44%. Still, 7.3 million cases in one year remains an enormous toll, and whether the pace holds amid funding pressures is far from settled.

Bison, for article on Chihuahuan Desert bison

Bison return to Mexican state of Coahuila for first time in 200 years

By Peter Schulte / September 16, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

Cuatrociénegas is one of North America’s strangest landscapes: 324 square miles of spring-fed pools, gypsum dunes, and diverse plant life. What it lacked was a large grazer. Forty-eight bison, most transferred from the Rancho El Uno herd in Chihuahua’s Janos Biosphere Reserve, now break up compacted soil, carry seeds in their coats, and carve shallow wallows — restarting processes that stopped generations ago. That herd descends from 23 bison the U.S. sent from Wind Cave National Park in 2009. Mexico still lists bison as at risk, and with no predators here, managing the herd’s growth is an open question.

Black bear, for article on black bear recolonization

Black bear population rebounds across the American South after near collapse

By Peter Schulte / September 15, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

Bears are not mountain animals — they thrive in swamps, pine stands, and farm-field margins, which is why the Mississippi floodplain was once their heartland. Mississippi had an estimated 12 bears left when it protected them in 1932; Arkansas, down to 40 or 50 in the 1950s, restocked with bears trucked in from Minnesota and Manitoba, now holds roughly 5,000. Louisiana’s bears left the federal threatened list in 2016. Females breed slowly and young males wander hundreds of miles, so the return is measured in decades. Conflict with farms and suburbs is the next problem to solve.

Przewalski's horse, for article on Przewalski's horse foals

Wild Przewalski’s horses born in Kazakhstan for the first time in 200 years

By Peter Schulte / September 10, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

Przewalski’s horses — the only living wild relatives of domestic horses — have taken a fragile but real step back toward their ancestral home on the Central Asian steppe. Two foals born at Kazakhstan’s Altyn Dala State Nature Reserve show that a herd translocated from European zoos is beginning to reproduce independently, a threshold conservationists consider proof of genuine adaptation. With only 24 horses currently in Kazakhstan against a target of roughly 40, the goal of a self-sustaining population remains ahead — yet this milestone joins a growing pattern of coordinated reintroductions quietly reversing extinctions that once seemed permanent.

Vultures, for article on Asia's vulture recovery

20 years after 99.9% decline, Asia’s vultures are now recovering

By Peter Schulte / August 13, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

Asia’s vultures are making a genuine comeback after one of the most dramatic wildlife collapses ever recorded. The turnaround traces to a coordinated ban on veterinary diclofenac — the painkiller quietly killing vultures through scavenged livestock carcasses — alongside breeding programs, drug monitoring, and community-level Safe Zones. Nepal’s populations have shown real, if partial, growth, while India’s numbers have stabilized but remain far below historical levels, and problematic large diclofenac vials are still manufactured. This story shows that science-led, cross-border conservation can reverse declines once thought permanent.

Tiger running in the snow, for article on Nepal tiger population

Nepal’s wild tiger population climbs to 429, nearly quadrupling since 2010

By Peter Schulte / August 5, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

Nepal’s wild tigers now number 429 — already exceeding the country’s estimated habitat carrying capacity of around 400, which means the recovery itself is generating new pressures like human-tiger conflict and habitat strain. Getting here took 15 years of patient, community-rooted conservation, with local buffer zone committees and forest user groups driving anti-poaching efforts alongside government enforcement. Nepal now ranks third globally for wild tiger population, just ahead of Indonesia. This story shows what’s possible when communities lead conservation — and why expanding habitat must keep pace with the animals returning to it.

Saiga antelope, for article on saiga population recovery

Once critically endangered, Kazakhstan’s saiga rebounds to 4.6 million

By Peter Schulte / August 2, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

Kazakhstan’s 2026 spring aerial census, flown by two biplanes over 215 hours, counted saiga across three herds — the largest, the Ural population, alone reaching 2.7 million, up 17.4% in a single year. Two decades ago the entire national population had crashed below 25,000. The rebound is now so complete that farmers report herds trampling crops and crowding pastureland, and the conservation effort behind it won the 2024 Earthshot Prize. It stands as proof that a species written off as nearly gone can return in the millions.

Whale fin, for article on Antarctic whale recovery, for article on humpback whale recovery

Humpback whales rebound from near-extinction after 1986 hunting ban

By Peter Schulte / August 2, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

Humpback whales are staging one of the most remarkable comebacks in modern conservation history, with southern hemisphere populations growing from fewer than 10,000 at the peak of commercial whaling to more than 100,000 today. Last December, a South African couple counted 299 humpbacks gathered in a single group — what experts describe as likely the largest such sighting on record. It’s a living signal of what decades of sustained international protection can achieve. But the recovery is fragile: shipping traffic around southern Africa quadrupled after 2023, raising serious collision risks for whales that took generations to return.