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.

Bolivian rainforest, for article on Amazon rainforest protection

Bolivian town Sena protects 1 million acres of Amazon rainforest

By / / Good News For Humankind

Amazon rainforest protection just got a remarkable boost from an unlikely source: a Bolivian town of 2,500 people passed a law safeguarding 1.1 million acres of intact forest. The new Gran Manupare reserve lifts conservation coverage in Bolivia’s Pando Department to 26% of its land, and locks in an estimated 9.2 million tons of irrecoverable carbon. It’s also a haven for giant river otters, jaguars, and big-leaf mahogany — and it works because standing forests pay, thanks to a Brazil nut economy that depends on healthy ecosystems. Piece by piece, Bolivian communities have now stitched together 10 million contiguous hectares of protected Amazon, proving that community-led conservation can match anything achieved by national decree.

Aerial view of rolling hills, for article on biodiversity net gain

England brings in biodiversity rules to force builders to compensate for loss of nature

By / / Good News For Humankind

England’s new biodiversity law requires every new construction project — from housing estates to highways — to leave nature at least 10% better off than before. Developers must now either restore habitats on-site or fund equivalent improvements elsewhere, with credits scientifically measured and traceable rather than self-reported. Much of that restoration is expected to happen on farmland, opening a new income stream for farmers who protect wetlands, wildflower meadows, and woodlands. Oxford researchers call the scheme “world-leading in its scope,” and Sweden, Singapore, Scotland, and Wales are already watching closely. If it works, England will have shown that the old trade-off between building and nature isn’t inevitable — and that mandatory nature markets can become a serious tool in the global fight to halt biodiversity loss.

Mangrove forest, for article on Pakistan mangrove restoration

Pakistan has expanded mangroves nearly threefold between 1986 and 2020

By / / Good News For Humankind

Pakistan’s mangrove forests have nearly tripled since 1986, growing from about 48,000 hectares to 144,000 hectares — a striking reversal of the global pattern of mangrove loss. Most of that expansion sits in the Indus Delta, where roughly 100,000 people depend on healthy mangroves for fishing livelihoods. The recovery has been driven by an unusual mix: provincial forest departments, international scientific partnerships, carbon credit financing, and fishing villages whose residents work as nursery hands and patrol against illegal cutting. In one coastal town, a single nursery holds 50,000 saplings ready for planting. As coastlines worldwide face rising seas and intensifying storms, Pakistan’s quietly persistent restoration offers a real-world template for what sustained, community-rooted conservation can achieve.

Squirrel monkey, for article on Indigenous-led land management

New fund supports Indigenous-led land management in biodiverse area of Bolivia

By / / Good News For Humankind

Indigenous communities in Bolivia’s Madidi Landscape just launched a dedicated conservation fund, opening with $650,000 from the Bezos Earth Fund to back work they’ve been doing for generations. Four nations — the Tacana, Lecos, T’simane Mosetene, and San José de Uchupiamonas — will direct the money themselves through an Indigenous-led board, finally putting resources behind territorial plans they first drafted twenty years ago. Madidi National Park is the most biodiverse protected area on land anywhere, home to more than 9,000 recorded species, from Andean condors to maned wolves. Globally, only a sliver of conservation funding reaches Indigenous hands directly, even though these communities steward most of the world’s remaining biodiversity. Funds like this one offer a hopeful blueprint for changing that.

Lionesses and cubs

Belgium bans import of hunting trophies from endangered species

By / / Good news links

Before the ban, Belgium allowed the import of trophy species vulnerable to extinction such as hippopotamus, cheetahs and polar bears. The new law will stop the import of hunting trophies from many species currently at risk of extinction or that could be threatened unless trade is limited. The bill will protect all species listed in the European Regulation on the protection of species of wild fauna and flora.

Desert landscape at sunset, for article on Mexico protected areas

Mexico announces 20 new protected areas covering more than 5 million acres of land

By / / Good News For Humankind

Mexico’s protected areas just expanded by 2.3 million hectares — roughly 5.7 million acres — with 20 new designations spanning 12 states and two coastal zones. The largest, Bajos del Norte national park in the Gulf of Mexico, safeguards grouper spawning grounds, hawksbill turtles, and the livelihoods of more than 3,000 fishing families along the Yucatán coast. Inland, the new Sierra Tecuani biosphere reserve formalizes jaguar habitat that Indigenous ejido communities in Guerrero have quietly tracked and tended for over a decade. Other sites shelter whale sharks, Pacific sea turtle nesting beaches, and the burrowing Mexican prairie dog. The most hopeful thread here isn’t the decree itself — it’s the recognition that lasting conservation tends to grow from the communities already doing the work.

Golden mahseer fish swimming, for article on putitor mahseer recovery

Indigenous effort in Bangladesh helps reverse endangered fish’s slide to extinction

By / / Good News For Humankind

Endangered putitor mahseer are swimming again in the springs of Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts, where scientists had nearly written the species off. The turnaround started when Indigenous communities revived their traditional Village Common Forests, protecting headwaters and banning fishing in restored springs — with a fine of 5,000 taka per fish to back it up. Within three years of forest protection, villagers like Lika Chakma watched long-silent springs run year-round again, and the fish followed. As global freshwater biodiversity declines faster than life on land or in the sea, this small comeback in eastern Bangladesh offers a hopeful blueprint: when Indigenous stewardship is trusted and resourced, ecosystems can heal themselves.

River dolphin, for article on river dolphin declaration

11 countries sign global pact to protect endangered river dolphins

By / / Good News For Humankind

River dolphins just got their first global lifeline: 11 countries have signed the Global Declaration for River Dolphins, a pact aiming to double Asian populations and halt declines across South America by 2030. It’s a meaningful turn for a group of species that has lost nearly three-quarters of its numbers since the 1980s. The hope isn’t abstract — China’s Yangtze finless porpoise population grew 23% over five years under strict protections, and the Indus river dolphin has nearly doubled in two decades. Because dolphins signal the health of the rivers nearly a billion people depend on, their recovery points toward something larger: that coordinated, community-rooted conservation can still pull ecosystems back from the brink.

Silhouette of an elephant, for article on African elephant populations

Elephant populations stabilize in southern Africa

By / / Good News For Humankind

African elephant populations across the southern range have stabilized for the first time in a century, with surveys of more than 290,000 savannah elephants showing a small but steady annual growth rate from 1995 to 2020. The most comprehensive study of its kind, drawing on 713 surveys across 103 protected areas, credits decades of anti-poaching work, community-based conservation, and expanded protected lands. Researchers also found that connected reserves, where elephants can move between habitats, produce healthier outcomes than isolated “fortress” parks. The takeaway feels quietly powerful: after generations of devastating loss, patient work by rangers, scientists, and local communities has interrupted the collapse — a reminder that stitching fragmented landscapes back together may be one of conservation’s most important tasks worldwide.