Civil society

Civil society encompasses the nonprofits, advocacy groups, community organizations, and grassroots movements that operate outside government and business to advance the public good. This archive collects stories of civil society actors driving measurable progress on issues ranging from human rights and environmental protection to public health and civic participation.

Guam Kingfisher, for article on Guam kingfisher reintroduction

‘Extinct’ Guam kingfisher takes flight again after nearly 40 years

By / / Good News For Humankind

Six Guam kingfishers — known as sihek — took their first wild flight in nearly 40 years when they were released on Palmyra Atoll, a predator-free Pacific refuge, in September 2024. The species was declared extinct in the wild in 1988, and every sihek alive today descends from just 29 birds rescued in the 1980s. Their return is the result of a global rescue effort spanning continents, with zookeepers from Kansas to London hand-rearing chicks and accompanying them to the Pacific. Each released bird now wears a tiny tracker as it learns to hunt on its own. It’s a quiet reminder that even species written off as lost can find their way back, when people refuse to give up on them.

Person filling syringe with vaccine, for article on mpox vaccines for Africa

Global alliance buys half a million mpox vaccines for Africa

By / / Good News For Humankind

Gavi has tapped its emergency First Response Fund for the very first time, committing up to $50 million to send 500,000 mpox vaccines to African countries hit hardest by the outbreak. The fund was built precisely for moments like this — letting the alliance move within days of a health emergency rather than waiting on slower funding cycles. The doses, from manufacturer Bavarian Nordic, will head to places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has carried the heaviest burden of the new Clade 1b strain. It’s a real start, even as experts estimate Africa needs around 10 million doses overall. If the tool keeps getting used and funded, it could reshape how quickly the world responds to outbreaks in lower-income regions.

Aerial view of a turquoise French Polynesian atoll for an article about French Polynesia marine protected area, for article on debt-for-nature swap, for article on coral reef protection

$35 million debt-for-nature deal aims to protect Indonesia’s coral reefs

By / / Good News For Humankind

A $35 million debt-for-nature swap between the U.S. and Indonesia will channel money that would have gone toward sovereign debt payments into coral reef protection over the next nine years. It’s the first agreement of its kind focused specifically on coral, and it targets nearly two million acres of reef across the Coral Triangle — the most biodiverse marine region on Earth, holding close to two-thirds of all known coral species. Indonesian nonprofits and local communities will guide the work, with a grant committee including civil society voices. As warming oceans threaten reefs worldwide, deals like this offer a model for tying debt relief to the ecosystems millions of people depend on.

Shot of a young male doctor standing with his arms crossed in an office at a hospital, for article on HBCU medical school funding

Michael Bloomberg gives $600 million to four Black medical schools’ endowments

By / / Good News For Humankind

HBCU medical schools just received $600 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies, with Howard, Meharry, and Morehouse each getting $175 million and Charles R. Drew receiving $75 million. The gift will more than double the endowments at three of the four schools, giving them the kind of long-term, flexible funding that lets institutions plan decades ahead — recruiting faculty, expanding class sizes, and offering scholarships without leaning so hard on tuition. An additional $5 million supports a new medical school launching at Xavier University of Louisiana with Ochsner Health. Black Americans make up roughly 13% of the U.S. population but less than 6% of practicing physicians, and research consistently links Black doctors to better outcomes for Black patients. Training more of them is one of the clearest paths toward closing that gap.

Baby crocodile, for article on Siamese crocodile hatching

Near-extinct Siamese crocodiles make comeback in Cambodia

By / / Good News For Humankind

Sixty baby Siamese crocodiles have hatched in Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains, the largest single hatching of this critically endangered species recorded anywhere this century. With only around 400 surviving in the wild worldwide, those tiny new arrivals represent a meaningful slice of the entire global population. What makes the news especially hopeful is where the five nests were found: in an area where no captive-bred crocodiles had ever been released, meaning the species is quietly breeding on its own again. Local community wardens guarded the nests around the clock until every egg hatched, a reminder that this recovery belongs to the people who live alongside these rivers. For a species many scientists once believed extinct in the wild, it’s a quiet, powerful sign that patient, community-led conservation works.

Close up of a Black-faced impala., for article on white-eared kob migration

South Sudan launches epic effort to protect the world’s largest mammal migration

By / / Good News For Humankind

South Sudan’s great migration — now confirmed as the largest land mammal movement on Earth — sweeps up to six million animals across the floodplains each year, following rainfall in a vast circular loop. A new 10-year partnership between the South Sudanese government and the nonprofit African Parks is working to keep it that way, blending aerial surveys and GPS collars with generations of Indigenous knowledge. Seventeen ethnic groups share this landscape, and for centuries they’ve left informal corridors of “No Man’s Land” open so wildlife can pass freely between them. Tribal members now serve as observers, technicians, and field operators in the conservation effort itself. It’s a hopeful reminder that the most enduring protection often grows from the people who’ve always lived alongside what they’re protecting.

Iberian lynx, for article on Iberian lynx recovery

Iberian lynx no longer endangered after numbers improve in Spain and Portugal

By / / Good News For Humankind

The Iberian lynx has climbed from just 94 individuals in 2002 to 2,021 today, earning a reclassification from “endangered” to “vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List. Two decades ago, the world’s most threatened wild cat was confined to two small populations in southern Spain and widely expected to vanish. What turned things around was patient, unglamorous work: breeding programs, reintroductions across Spain and Portugal, rabbit recovery efforts, and local communities choosing to share their land with an animal once treated as vermin. Threats remain — road deaths, rabbit disease, and climate change — but the lynx now stands as living proof that coordinated, cross-border conservation can pull a species back from the edge, offering a template for recoveries elsewhere.

Alive sturgeon in aquarium, for article on Atlantic sturgeon reintroduction

Atlantic sturgeon reintroduced in Sweden for the first time after “functional extinction”

By / / Good News For Humankind

Atlantic sturgeon are back in Sweden’s Göta River for the first time in over a century, with 100 juvenile fish — each around 60 centimeters long — released near Bohus Fortress. Each one carries an acoustic transmitter so researchers can follow their journey toward the sea and, hopefully, back again to spawn. The fish were bred in Germany and brought over with support from Rewilding Europe, part of a growing network of sturgeon recovery projects stretching across the continent’s rivers. Sturgeon stir up riverbeds, host mussels, and signal a healthy ecosystem just by showing up. Their return is a quiet, patient kind of hope — proof that even species lost for generations can find their way home when the water is ready to receive them.

Horses on grassland, for article on Przewalski's horses

Wild horses return to Kazakhstan steppes after two-century absence

By / / Good News For Humankind

Przewalski’s horses—the only truly wild horse species left on Earth—are back on the Kazakh steppe after a two-century absence, with seven animals arriving from zoos in Berlin and Prague in June 2024. Their 30-hour flight aboard a Czech air force transport ended in the very landscape where humans likely first domesticated horses some 5,500 years ago. The herd is set to grow to 40 over the next five years, and the horses will quietly get to work as ecosystem engineers, spreading seeds and loosening soil as they roam. A similar effort in Mongolia has grown a wild population to roughly 1,500—a hopeful sign that this homecoming could ripple outward, restoring both a species and the grasslands that need it.

Bison, for article on Portugal wild bison

Portugal welcomes first wild bison in 10,000 years as part of plan to rewild a quarter-million acres

By / / Good News For Humankind

European wood bison are back in Portugal for the first time since the last Ice Age, with a small herd settling into the Greater Côa Valley. They came from Poland, where more than 4,000 wisent now roam wild — a remarkable turnaround for a species that survived the 20th century with just 50 animals left in zoos. Conservationists hope the bison will reshape the landscape through grazing and trampling, encouraging biodiversity and even helping break up the dense, dry vegetation that fuels Portugal’s wildfires. It’s a small herd with a big role to play, and a hopeful sign of what Europe’s growing rewilding movement can do when given room to breathe.