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.

Rows of young trees growing on a hillside, part of an African reforestation program

The TREES program has planted tens of millions of trees across Africa since 2015

By / / Good News For Humankind

Reforestation done right looks less like a planting day and more like a four-year partnership with farmers — and the TREES program has quietly restored more than 41,000 hectares across nine African countries, an area roughly seven times the size of Manhattan. Instead of dropping seeds on remote land, TREES helps smallholder families build “forest gardens” of about 5,800 trees per hectare, weaving in fruit orchards, food crops, and windbreaks that feed households and generate a market surplus. In Kenya’s Kesouma region alone, 17,000 farmers have joined in. Earlier this year, the UN named it a World Restoration Flagship — a reminder that the most durable climate work tends to be the kind that pays the people doing it.

Dominican Republic forested landscape

The Dominican Republic reforests a fifth of the country in 10 years

By / / Good News For Humankind

The Dominican Republic restored 18% of its territory in a single decade — not through sweeping mandates, but through conversations with farmers, one at a time. Plan Yaque, a coalition of 30 NGOs and government agencies, launched in 2009 with a simple premise: help landowners see trees as a path to water security and steadier farm income. Project leaders traveled farm by farm, and as restored hillsides began holding water and reviving streams, neighbors became the project’s most persuasive advocates. The result is one of the largest land recoveries in the Western Hemisphere this century — and a reminder that some of the most durable environmental wins come from trust, not enforcement.

Bee on yellow flowers

E.U. passes landmark law to restore 20% of Europe’s degraded land and sea by 2030

By / / Good News For Humankind

The EU nature restoration law is now official, requiring all 27 member states to put restoration measures in place across at least 20% of Europe’s land and seas by 2030, with every degraded ecosystem on track for repair by 2050. It’s the first legally binding restoration target in EU history, with enforceable milestones, national plans, and consequences for falling behind. Among its boldest commitments: rewetting drained peatlands, freeing 25,000 kilometers of rivers from obsolete dams and barriers, and reversing pollinator decline by the end of the decade. Coming after a razor-thin parliamentary vote and months of political resistance, the law shows that a major democracy can still choose to act on ecological collapse — offering a template the rest of the world can learn from.

Salmon jumping upstream

President Biden brokers $1 billion deal with Oregon, Washington, 4 Columbia River tribes to revive Northwest salmon population

By / / Good News For Humankind

A billion-dollar plan to bring salmon back to the Columbia River Basin just got a formal signature from the Biden administration, Oregon, Washington, and four tribal nations. The Columbia was once the greatest salmon-producing river system on Earth, supporting 16 stocks — four are now extinct and seven are listed as endangered. The agreement pauses decades of litigation and, crucially, puts tribes at the center as active partners in clean energy development, not just consultation. Yakama Nation Chairman Gerald Lewis put it plainly: more clean energy, yes, but built in a way that’s socially just. It’s a hopeful blueprint for what an honest, Indigenous-led ecological recovery can look like — for the Pacific Northwest and for river systems everywhere.

Aerial view of Amazon rainforest canopy and river near Sena, Bolivia, with mountains beyond

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

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.

Dense mangrove forest with arching trunks reflected in calm green water, Pakistan

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 perched on a leafy branch in a lush tropical forest in Bolivia

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.

Desert landscape at sunset

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

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.