PROGRESS
CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURE: 1. POTHOLES: 0.
PROGRESS
New York filled its 200,000th pothole. Yes, that counts.
Two hundred thousand holes became not-holes.
SOURCENYC Department of Transportation
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ALL THE SLOP
Every serving. No expiration date. Page 5 of 6.
ANIMALS
NAMED BY LOCALS FIRST.
ANIMALS
Science just added a new cat to the family tree.
Locals already had a name for it. Genomics gave science one.
SOURCECurrent Biology
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ANIMALS
LOUD AND INCREASING.
ANIMALS
One sanctuary just counted almost 100 more of New Zealand's rarest parakeets.
285 counted in a single day, almost 100 more than last year.
SOURCENew Zealand Department of Conservation
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NATURE
DONE BY HAND.
NATURE
The diggers couldn't get there. So they fixed the bog by hand.
Ten days, wooden dams, no machinery. Pools are already forming.
SOURCENatureScot
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NATURE
DAMS OUT. SALMON IN.
NATURE
The dams came down. More than 20,000 salmon came back.
Four dams gone. 21,052 adult Chinook counted upstream across two seasons. Eighty-eight percent of their documented historic range reoccupied — early, and encouraging.
SOURCEScientific Reports
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HUMANS
800 VILLAGERS. 350,000 OBSERVATIONS.
HUMANS
They used to hunt the wildlife. Now the photos pay better.
About 800 villagers across nine Borneo villages get paid for verified photos, video and audio of wildlife. Two villages have since banned hunting themselves.
SOURCEBorneo Futures
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HUMANS
$650 AND JEOPARDY AT 7.
HUMANS
The rent was too high. Then she met her 77-year-old roommate.
Affordable rent, useful help, and Jeopardy at 7.
SOURCEGood Good Good / HomeShare Vermont
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ANIMALS
TWO WIRES, SWITCHED OFF.
ANIMALS
Kenya’s pangolins kept dying on electric fences. So landowners switched off the bottom wires.
The fix was two unpowered wires.
SOURCEMongabay / The Pangolin Project
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ANIMALS
EIGHT POUNDS OF RARE CAT.
ANIMALS
An Ohio zoo just had its first-ever Amur leopard cub.
Eight pounds of extremely rare cat.
SOURCECleveland Metroparks Zoo
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NATURE
208 TURTLES, HAND-DELIVERED.
NATURE
Seven “turtle women” sent 208 hatchlings back to the Amazon.
235 eggs in. 208 tiny turtles out.
SOURCEMongabay
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PROGRESS
THE MAP WAS THE PROBLEM.
PROGRESS
The world map is finally admitting how big Africa is.
Africa was not small. The map was weird.
SOURCEAssociated Press
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ANIMALS
SHE WENT BACK. SHE STAYED.
ANIMALS
The gorilla they rescued as a baby just had one in the wild.
Rescued at 18 months. Rewilded eight years later. Now Lulingu is raising a baby of her own in the forest.
SOURCEGRACE Gorillas
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HUMANS
SAME BLOOD DRIVE. DIFFERENT DOORS.
HUMANS
The church and mosque next door keep giving blood together.
They started as new neighbors. Fifteen years later, the annual blood drive is still on the calendar.
SOURCEMemphis Islamic Center
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PROGRESS
RUBELLA, OFF THE LIST.
PROGRESS
Thailand just knocked rubella off the public-health list.
Decades of vaccination and surveillance turned a dangerous pregnancy infection into a preventable public-health victory.
SOURCEWorld Health Organization
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NATURE
THE LAND CHANGED HANDS.
NATURE
7,500 acres just switched sides.
An English grouse-and-sheep estate is being reworked around peat, wildlife and long-term restoration instead.
SOURCEThe Guardian
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ANIMALS
653 FROGS, RELOCATED HOME.
ANIMALS
653 frogs just got their mountains back.
653 endangered frogs. Two mountain-stream releases. One species getting a real shot at coming back.
SOURCELos Angeles Zoo
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NATURE
ONE BIRD BOUGHT THE LAND.
NATURE
One weird bird helped build 19 nature reserves.
A bird nobody had scientifically recorded helped trigger a conservation network protecting habitat across Ecuador.
SOURCEThe Guardian
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HUMANS
THE BOAT ADAPTED.
HUMANS
The wheelchair stays on shore. The sailor doesn’t.
Sometimes inclusion looks like a hoist, a custom boat and a wide-open sea.
SOURCEReasons to Be Cheerful
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PROGRESS
STONE IS LOAD-BEARING AGAIN.
PROGRESS
They built a high-rise out of stone. Like, structurally.
The future of lower-carbon construction might involve a material humans have been stacking for thousands of years.
SOURCEDezeen
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NATURE
THE WATER IS COMING BACK.
NATURE
We drained the swamp. Now we’re un-draining it.
A 23-square-mile tract of drained North Carolina peatland is being rewetted, replanted and restored to hold water, reduce fire risk, rebuild habitat and stop releasing so much stored carbon. Sometimes progress is admitting the ditch was a bad idea.
SOURCEAssociated Press
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ANIMALS
A BRIDGE JUST FOR DEER.
ANIMALS
The deer have infrastructure now.
Washington’s I-90 Snoqualmie Pass wildlife overcrossing recorded its 10,000th successful animal crossing in July. Add 11 undercrossings and the project is nearing 40,000 recorded crossings since 2014. Apparently the elk were just waiting for civil engineering.
SOURCEWashington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) via Good Good Good
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ANIMALS
THE PARROT SAID NO.
ANIMALS
The world’s weirdest parrot refused to go extinct.
New Zealand’s critically endangered kākāpō population has reached 325, after a record 90 chicks joined the official count this season. The recovery program began in 1995 with just 51 birds. Extremely round bird: still here.
SOURCENew Zealand Department of Conservation / Kākāpō Recovery Programme
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HUMANS
DINNER. YOUR PRICE.
HUMANS
100 restaurants said: pay what you can.
A one-day idea from Mexico City restaurant Masala y Maíz grew into a global event with 100 restaurants in 14 countries signed on, while staff kept their normal wages and tips. The radical business innovation: trust people.
SOURCEPaga Lo Que Puedas / Masala y Maíz via Good Good Good
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PROGRESS
TRACHOMA, REGION-WIDE, GONE.
PROGRESS
A whole region just knocked trachoma off the public-health list.
WHO has validated Timor-Leste’s elimination of trachoma as a public health problem. Because it was the last country in WHO’s South-East Asia Region where the disease was still suspected to be a public-health problem, the entire region has now cleared that threshold.
SOURCEWorld Health Organization
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