SCIENCE + ANIMALS + NATURE + PROGRESS — Page 7 | HOPESLOP Archive

SHE WENT BACK. SHE STAYED.

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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FOUR MILLION LAKES, WATCHED.

The Arctic has a new early-warning map. It watches lakes disappear.

Four million Arctic lakes are now being watched in near real time for signs that frozen ground is giving way.

SOURCEAlfred Wegener Institute

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RUBELLA, OFF THE LIST.

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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THE LAND CHANGED HANDS.

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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653 FROGS, RELOCATED HOME.

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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ONE BIRD BOUGHT THE LAND.

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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STONE IS LOAD-BEARING AGAIN.

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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NINE MONTHS HE DIDN'T HAVE.

The pig kidney bought him nine months. It was enough.

A genetically modified pig kidney kept Tim Andrews off dialysis for 271 days — the longest such stretch yet in a living person. He later received a human kidney, making this the first reported pig-kidney transplant to serve as a bridge to a human one.

SOURCEMass General Brigham / The Lancet

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THE WATER IS COMING BACK.

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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YOUR TREE PHOTOS HAVE A JOB.

The AI still needs your tree photos.

AI-generated images helped species-identification models when real photos were scarce — but actual photographs from people in the real world still performed better. Your random tree picture remains scientifically employed.

SOURCENC State University

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A BRIDGE JUST FOR DEER.

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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THE CLINIC RUNS ON SUN.

The sun is running a clinic now.

Twenty-three students built Stella Juva, a solar-powered mobile clinic that drove more than 800 km across Kenya and, while stationary, generated enough energy to power all its onboard medical equipment at once. It hasn’t treated real patients yet — this was field testing — but the sun appears to be doing rounds.

SOURCESolar Team Eindhoven / Amref Health Africa

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THE PARROT SAID NO.

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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TRACHOMA, REGION-WIDE, GONE.

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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RELEASE DAY. TEARS INVOLVED.

Crush went home. Everyone cried.

Crush, a loggerhead found cold-stunned and nearly lifeless on a Jersey beach in January, spent months in rehabilitation before being flown to the Azores, fitted with a satellite tag, and released back into the Atlantic. Good turtle. Good humans. Everybody go home.

SOURCELittlefeet Environmental / SEA LIFE Weymouth / Channel 103

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RABIES LOST ITS FOOTHOLD.

Bhutan just kicked dog-transmitted rabies off the public-health list.

WHO has validated Bhutan’s elimination of dog-transmitted human rabies as a public-health problem — the first country in WHO’s South-East Asia Region to reach the milestone. Bhutan has gone more than two years without a human death from dog-transmitted rabies. Vaccines, surveillance and people showing up worked.

SOURCEWorld Health Organization

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