Wildlife & land conservation

This archive tracks meaningful progress in protecting wildlife and preserving land — from habitat restoration and endangered species recoveries to new protected areas and conservation policy wins. These stories focus on what’s working, grounded in evidence and reported with care.

Saiga antelope, for article on saiga population recovery

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

By / / 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.

European bison in the snow, for article on European bison recovery

Wild bison return to Romania’s Southern Carpathians after 250 years

By / / Good News For Humankind

European bison vanished from Romanian forests roughly 250 years ago, hunted and squeezed out until only captive breeding kept the species alive — so a self-sustaining wild herd, nearly half born free in the Țarcu Mountains, represents something conservationists once considered impossible. A new Bison Ambassadors program pairs an actress, a regenerative farmer, and a biologist with the rewilding landscape to carry that story to audiences institutional conservation rarely reaches. Tensions with farmers and uncertain funding mean the future is not guaranteed. Still, this recovery shows what patient, community-rooted rewilding can achieve — and how one landscape’s healing can inspire others across Europe.

Colombia hillside, for article on cattle traceability law, for article on cattle traceability law, for article on cattle traceability law

Colombia passes landmark law to track millions of cattle and fight deforestation

By / / Good News For Humankind

Colombia’s new cattle traceability law is a landmark shift in how one of the Amazon’s most deforestation-prone industries will be held accountable. For the first time, slaughterhouses, traders, and exporters must prove their beef isn’t linked to illegal deforestation — covering more than 29.7 million cattle across the country. The law also aligns Colombia’s beef sector with the EU’s incoming deforestation regulations, adding real trade incentives to the environmental ones. Conservation groups see it as a model for the region, proof that persistent advocacy can turn a long-documented problem into binding law.

River Wye, for article on River Wye rights charter

River Wye recognized as a living ecosystem with rights in a U.K. first

By / / Good News For Humankind

The River Wye just became the first entire river catchment in the U.K. to be formally recognized as a living ecosystem with intrinsic rights, covering its full 130-mile journey from the Cambrian mountains to the Bristol Channel. Herefordshire and Powys councils have already signed the new charter, with two more expected to follow. Ecologist Dr. Louise Bodnar has been appointed the river’s first formal voice, holding a voting seat on the catchment’s nutrient management board. It’s a quietly radical idea — that a river deserves a seat at the table where its future is decided — and it adds real momentum to a growing global movement giving nature legal standing of its own.

Seabird, for article on PFAS levels in Canadian seabird eggs

Banned ‘forever chemicals’ fell up to 74% in Canadian seabird eggs over 55 years

By / / Good News For Humankind

Toxic “forever chemical” levels in northern gannet eggs from Canada’s largest seabird colony have dropped 74% from their peak, according to a new peer-reviewed study tracking 55 years of data. Researchers on Bonaventure Island watched PFOS concentrations climb through the late 1990s, cross the threshold considered dangerous to the birds themselves, and then steadily fall as governments and manufacturers began phasing the chemicals out. Because gannets sit near the top of the marine food chain, their eggs essentially record the chemical health of an entire ecosystem — and what they’re recording now is recovery. It’s a rare, clearly documented case of environmental regulation working on a timescale humans can actually see, offering a hopeful blueprint as countries weigh broader PFAS restrictions today.

Pangolin, for article on Chinese pangolin population

Chinese pangolins rebound in southern China for the first time this century

By / / Good News For Humankind

Chinese tree pangolins are quietly returning to Guangdong Province, where wildlife monitors now count 1,778 of the scaly, ant-eating mammals in the wild — places where local populations had crashed to zero just years ago. Six years after China granted the species its highest protection status, a network of 690 infrared cameras is tracking the rebound in near-real time, while the country’s first dedicated pangolin research and breeding center has opened in Guangzhou. China also removed pangolin scales from its official list of approved traditional medicine ingredients, cutting at the demand that made this the world’s most trafficked wild mammal. For a creature vanishing within living memory, a measured comeback in its home range offers a real template for pulling other species back from the edge.

Elephant with baby, for article on elephant return to Uganda

At least 60 elephants return to Uganda’s Mount Elgon after 40 years

By / / Good News For Humankind

Elephants have returned to Uganda’s Mount Elgon National Park — at least 60 of them, crossing the Suam River from Kenya into forests their ancestors abandoned during the poaching and conflict of the late 1970s. Drone footage and collar tracking confirm the herd has settled in, and wildlife officials say the mountain’s regenerating forests are finally lush enough to welcome them home. One striking theory: the elephants who once learned to fear Uganda have died of old age, and a new generation is rediscovering the land without that memory. It’s a quiet, hopeful reminder that when habitat heals, wildlife often finds its own way back — and that lasting coexistence will depend on supporting the farming communities now sharing the landscape.

Mongolian wild asses, for article on khulan wild ass

Hundreds of Asiatic wild asses return to eastern Mongolia after 65 years

By / / Good News For Humankind

Asiatic wild asses, known as khulan, are roaming eastern Mongolia again after more than 60 years away, with hundreds now recorded crossing the Trans-Mongolian Railway into habitat they had vanished from. The turnaround began with a simple experiment: conservationists and government partners opened fence-free stretches of railway and watched to see what would happen. Animals crossed, trains kept running safely, and in May 2025 a monitored passage corridor was made official near the China-Mongolia border. Mongolia’s Gobi is home to roughly 91,000 khulan, the vast majority of the species worldwide, so reconnecting their range really matters. It’s a hopeful reminder that even the hard lines we’ve drawn across wild places can be redrawn.

Mount Moco, for article on Serra do Moco Conservation Area

Angola creates 54,000-acre reserve for its highest peak, Mount Moco

By / / Good News For Humankind

Angola’s highest mountain just became a protected conservation area, safeguarding roughly 22,000 hectares of slopes and valleys where rare Afromontane forests still cling to life. The forests around Mount Moco had shrunk from 200–300 hectares to just 50–60 hectares before villagers in Kanjonde teamed up with ornithologists and the Kissama Foundation to turn things around. Together they’ve planted more than 8,000 native trees, swapped wood stoves for gas, and watched bird species like Cabanis’s greenbul return to places they hadn’t been recorded before. The win is especially meaningful for Swierstra’s francolin, a ground bird found almost nowhere else. It’s also proof that in a country still rebuilding after war, community-led conservation can take root and last.

Parrot in Colombia, for article on Colombia marine protection

Colombia has now protected 47% of marine areas and 26% of land and inland waters

By / / Good News For Humankind

Colombia has already protected 47.4% of its marine and coastal areas, blowing past the global 30×30 goal that 196 nations pledged in 2022. On land, it has reached 26.3% and is aiming for 34% by 2030, with much of that progress shared with Indigenous communities, Afro-descendant territories, and private landowners. The country’s approach blends a Switzerland-sized ocean sanctuary off the Pacific coast with more than 1,400 small civil society reserves, including a recovering cloud forest where mountain springs have returned and neighbors are planting native corridors. As the world falls behind on biodiversity targets, Colombia offers something rare: a working, inclusive model that other countries can actually learn from.