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.

Salmon swimming in river, for article on Klamath River dam removal

U.S. regulators approve world’s largest-ever dam demolition and river restoration project in California

By / / Good News For Humankind

Removing four dams on California’s Klamath River will reopen more than 300 miles of salmon habitat, making it the largest river restoration project ever attempted. Federal regulators approved the $500 million plan unanimously, capping decades of advocacy led by the Yurok, Karuk, and Hoopa Valley tribes, whose cultures and food systems have been bound to these fish since long before the first dam went up. “The Klamath salmon are coming home,” Yurok Chairman Joseph James said after the vote. As drought reshapes the American West, letting a major river run free again offers a powerful template for healing watersheds, honoring Indigenous leadership, and rethinking what aging infrastructure owes the living world.

Lynx, for article on Iberian highlands rewilding

Lynx, wild horses and vultures return to eastern Spain in latest rewilding project

By / / Good News For Humankind

Rewilding Europe’s first project in Spain is bringing an 850,000-acre mountain landscape back to life — and the early signs are genuinely hopeful. Wild horses are already breeding, black vultures are being released at up to 15 a year, and Iberian lynx are expected within two years. The project is also designed around local communities, creating economic incentives for nature-based tourism and forest protection. Stories like this show that recovery is possible when wildlife, people, and landscape are treated as one connected system.

Koala, for article on Australia wildlife conservation

Australia to set aside at least 30% of its land mass to protect endangered species

By / / Good News For Humankind

Australia wildlife conservation just got a major boost: the federal government has pledged A$224.5 million to protect threatened native plants and animals, with conservation areas set to grow by 50 million hectares over the next decade. The 10-year plan zeroes in on 110 priority species and 20 special places, from koalas to swift parrots, with a formal review due in 2027. It’s a meaningful answer to a hard truth — Australia has lost more mammal species than any other continent, and the 2019-2020 bushfires alone killed or displaced an estimated three billion animals. The 30% land protection goal also puts Australia in step with a global movement to halt biodiversity loss, offering a hopeful template for countries wrestling with how to live alongside the rest of life on Earth.

Colombia jungle at sunset, for article on Heritage Colombia

Colombia launches $245-million initiative to create and maintain protected areas

By / / Good News For Humankind

Heritage Colombia is one of the most significant conservation investments the country has ever made — pooling $245 million from governments, international institutions, and private donors to protect nearly 80 million acres of land and sea over the next decade. Colombia holds roughly 10% of the world’s biodiversity, making it one of the most ecologically critical places on Earth to get this right. Crucially, local communities are central to the design, not an afterthought. If it succeeds, Heritage Colombia could become a replicable model for how nations fund lasting, community-rooted conservation at scale.

Trees reflecting in lake, for article on Onondaga land return

1,000 acres of forest to be returned to Onondaga Nation in historic lake cleanup agreement

By / / Good News For Humankind

Land has been returned directly to a Native American tribe in New York for the first time, and the parcel is significant: nearly 1,000 acres of forest, wetlands, and the sacred headwaters of Onondaga Creek. The Onondaga Nation, original stewards of central New York, will own the land outright and care for it using traditional ecological knowledge, with plans to bring native brook trout back to waters they fished for centuries. The transfer grew out of a Superfund settlement with Honeywell, the company behind decades of industrial pollution nearby. It’s one of the largest Indigenous land returns in U.S. history — a small but meaningful shift in a global movement recognizing Native nations as the rightful caretakers of their homelands.