Starting the Year With Some Postive Stories

I want to share a sampling of positive stories that hit my feed over the last few days. There are many sources of environmental news, as are listed in our resources page on this website, but sometimes they pop up on other places. For example, two of these stories came from Aaron Parnas’s substack “The Parnas Perspective”; he does political reporting but he shares positive takes on Sunday mornings.

Reefs are important ecosystems that are not only beautiful and inspiring but which we depend on as a species as nurseries for fish and other seafood and much of our planet’s biodiversity, and they are dying in great part from increased ocean temperatures due to climate change. There are many wonderful stories about attempts to save and replenish reefs. One is assisted fertilization of corals, in the Dominican Republic. From the AP story

“Corals also are home to more than 25% of marine life, making them crucial for the millions of people around the world who make a living from fishing…

 “One research center room holds dozens of fish tanks, each with hundreds of tiny corals awaiting return to the reef. Del Rosario said the lab produces more than 2.5 million coral embryos per year. Only 1% will survive in the ocean, yet that figure is better than the rate with natural fertilization on these degraded reefs now, he said.

“In the past, Fundemar and other conservation organizations focused on asexual reproduction. That meant cutting a small piece of healthy coral and transplanting it to another location so that a new one would grow. The method can produce corals faster than assisted fertilization.

“The problem, Andreina Valdez said, is that it clones the same individual, meaning all those coral share the same disease vulnerabilities. In contrast, assisted sexual reproduction creates genetically different individuals, reducing the chance that a single illness could strike them all down..

“Australia pioneered assisted coral fertilization. It’s expanding in the Caribbean, with leading projects at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Carmabi Foundation in Curaçao, and it’s being adopted in Puerto Rico, Cuba and Jamaica, Valdez said.

“’You can’t conserve something if you don’t have it. So (these programs) are helping to expand the population that’s out there’ said Mark Eakin, corresponding secretary for the International Coral Reef Society and retired chief of the Coral Reef Watch program of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…

“Del Rosario said there’s still time to halt the decline of the reefs.

‘More needs to be done, of course ... but we are investing a lot of effort and time to preserve what we love so much,’ he said. ‘And we trust and believe that many people around the world are doing the same.’”

Rehabilitating nature by planting 2.5 million trees was the 20-year project of Sebastião Salgado and his wife, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, who founded a nonprofit nature preserve, Instituto Terra.  From the article in GoogGoodGood :

 “… my wife had a fabulous idea to replant this forest. And when we began to do that, then all the insects and birds and fish returned and, thanks to this increase of the trees I, too, was reborn – this was the most important moment.”

“Now, the 1,750-acre property in the Doce River Valley region in Southeast Brazil is so covered in trees that it can be seen from space…

“It was a work of community, love, and dedication…

“In 2025, Sebastião Salgado passed away, but Lélia and a large team of committed ecologists continue to run Instituto Terra, which now serves as a hub for environmental education, seedling cultivation, and ecological research.” 

And one more, also from TCD Cool Down:

  “Lawmakers advance momentous ban on controversial fishing and trading practice.”

They claim this is a “historic win” and “should mark the end of overfishing” [specifically of sharks]. From their report:

“According to Phys.org, more than 70 shark and ray species are now subject to enhanced international protections. During talks held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, signatories to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) supported greater restrictions on the trade of endangered marine species…

“Species listed under CITES fall into three appendices. The most threatened come under Appendix 1, meaning a total ban on commercial trade and strong regulations on research specimens. Appendix 2 concerns species close to being threatened and their look-alikes; trade is heavily regulated. The third appendix can be applied at the request of a member state, though it is less strictly enforced…

“The most notable additions to Appendix 1 include whale sharks, manta, and devil rays.”

From the Pysics.org report that they cite:

"This is a historical win for sharks, something we were strongly hoping for," said Barbara Slee, senior program manager at the International Fund for Animal Welfare…

"Scientific data clearly shows sharks need to be treated as a conservation issue not a fishing resource," Slee told AFP.

“CITES regulates trade in over 40,000 species, effectively banning sales of the world's most endangered flora and fauna listed under its Appendix I, and putting limits on threatened species under Appendix II…

“’This means trade will be regulated and allowed only if it is considered sustainable…’

“After several contentious sessions on regulating trade in other species, including eels, the proposal to increase shark protections passed by consensus, which Slee said was a sign of changing perceptions of sharks.”

Let’s embrace these. Certainly such efforts alone won’t reverse the effects of the harms we humans due to ourselves by harming our environment. They won’t solve the root problems of careless over consumption, needless waste, and fossil fuel dependency. But I chose to celebrate the efforts, the victories, that buy us time, that embrace positive steps forward, that create a sense of who we can be.

The big picture requires all of care. All of us vote. All of us talk to others. All of us do what we can when we can; how big or small may be out of our hands and outside our control.

Caring matters. And these efforts are caring made manifest. Never know which ones may delay some tipping point just long enough…

And meantime our world is just a bit better.