Seabirds like puffins have evolved the ability to locate the ocean by following the moon and stars. As towns expand and the night sky fades under artificial light, that navigation system is breaking down.

In Iceland, a growing movement is working to reduce light pollution and rescue wayward birds so this treasured species can once again find its way home.

For the Shoshone people, Bear River has always been a lifeline — sustaining their culture, history, and way of life. But decades of displacement and environmental destruction severed that connection, threatening both the land and its people.

Now, after years of resilience, the Shoshone are rewilding the region, reviving native ecosystems, and reclaiming their heritage

In southern India, villages were built in the middle of an “elephant superhighway” used by the largest population of Asian elephants on Earth, leading to ongoing conflict that was dangerous for both the human residents and the elephants themselves. Conservationists proposed a radical solution: move the entire village!

Florida’s Crystal River used to be a rich seagrass ecosystem: a perfect source of food for the many manatees that once thrived there, before an invasive algae overtook the riverbed. With the native eelgrass dying out, the manatees were forced to look elsewhere for food – traveling into much more dangerous waters.

After the community rallied together to ask the state for support, the tide is finally beginning to turn. The dead algae can be vacuumed off the riverbed, re-exposing thermal vents that help keep Crystal River clean and warm. New seagrass can be planted by hand in order to restore the manatees food source – and after all that effort, Cyrstal River is finally becoming a safe and healthy haven for the returning manatees once again.

Pangolins are amazing, bizarre creatures that live in Central and Southern Africa. They feed exclusively and voraciously on ants and termites, and they’re perfectly specialized for this type of hunt.

To the local community, spotting a pangolin is a sign of a bountiful harvest and abundant rainfall — and of course they’d be hailed as a blessing… they’re adorable!

When top predators disappear, ecosystems unravel – but in places like Elkhorn Slough, nature has a way of fighting back.

Through a process called trophic cascade, the return of sea otters is restoring balance, keeping crab populations in check, and allowing vital seagrass meadows to thrive once again.

Meet the newest face of conservation: the indigo snake! They’re the largest snake species native to North America, and they prey on other snakes—even venomous ones—but are still docile-enough to be handled by young children.

Indigo snake populations have been on the decline due to habitat loss, so to help rebuild their numbers, a one-of-a kind breeding program is raising these gentle giants and returning them to forests across the southeastern US.

Millions of years ago, a single rosefinch species arrived on the Hawai’ian islands and evolved into over 50 species of honeycreepers — a phenomenon known as adaptive radiation, similar to how Darwin’s finches evolved in the Galápagos.

Now, the honeycreepers of today are threatened by new invaders to the islands: both by invasive predators like cats and rats, but also by a new outbreak of avian malaria spread by mosquitos. Conservationists are battling these threats and restoring native forests with the hope to protect these endemic, beautiful birds, and to save them from the brink of extinction.

Beavers are back in England for the first time in 400 years, and their dams are already protecting villages from flood and helping farmers in times of drought. The relationship between landowners and these ‘ecosystem engineers‘ has not always been amicable — more now more than ever, the benefits of beavers and their impact on waterways is becoming clear.

Golden lion tamarins were nearly wiped out in the 1970s, but worldwide efforts by 150 zoos helped bring the species back from near-extinction. Today, local conservationists are expanding the forests in Brazil, and the wild population has grown from under 200 to now over 4800 tamarins!

The greater adjutant stork is one of the largest — and rarest — storks on earth. Despite their positive impact on the surrounding ecosystem, locals in one of their last strongholds in Assam, India considered them to be a bad omen. That was, at least, until biologist Purnima Devi Barman revitalized their public image.

She took a community-centered approach to conservation, using local culture to explain the stork’s vital importance to the ecosystem. Today, a whole army of “stork sisters” support the bird’s protection — and the local breeding population has leapt from just 115 individuals to over 1800.

Black-footed ferrets — America’s only native ferret species — nearly went extinct several times in the 20th century. When animals from a critical breeding program were finally reintroduced to the wild, the first indigenous community to welcome and restore the ferrets was on Ft. Belnap Reservation in Montana.

Today, now decades later, members of that same community protect support the endangered ferrets by tracking them at night, capturing them, and vaccinating the ferrets against a non-native disease that remains the greatest threat to their survival.

The Santa Monica mountains near Los Angeles are home to a wide range of wildlife—including coyotes and mountain lions—all cut off from the rest of the world by the city’s massive freeways.

Now, the world’s largest wildlife crossing is under construction to reconnect the ecosystem and make it whole again.

The Brazilian treetops are full of creatures like monkeys, sloths, and kinkajous living high above a forest floor segmented by dangerous roadways. These species prefer to stick to the canopy, but in order to travel in search of food or mates, are known to walk across roadways and risk being struck by vehicles.

The Via Fauna team is installing arboreal crossings made of cheap, local materials to reconnect the forest canopy — and allow these creatures to once again move freely throughout their landscape.

Jaguars are top predators that need large spaces in which to live and hunt. In Belize, 35% of the land has been protected—but these areas are divided into two large clusters, connected by a crucial and dangerous bottleneck that the cats must navigate to survive.

Protecting that stretch of land is possible, but it takes time and coordination to safeguard the forest—so where to start first?

Researchers are using satellite tracking colors and remote camera traps to identify the jaguars’ favorite pathways through the unprotected land. By identifying the routes that jaguars prefer, conservation teams can focus their efforts on purchasing and protecting that forest first. It’s a strategy that’s worked so far, and the hope is to continue the effort to connect 18 countries from Mexico to Argentina to create a unified long-distance corridor for jaguars and other rainforest wildlife.

Brazil has more biodiversity than any other nation on Earth, but it also has more than a million miles of roads — and suffers from some of the highest rates of wildlife collisions on the planet. The crisscrossing highways fragment the remaining forest into segments too small for animals like pumas, monkeys, and sloths, which will attempt to cross the dangerous thoroughfares in search of food and mates.

Biologist Fernanda Alba and her team are establishing a network of underpasses across the country that allow big terrestrial animals to pass freely between forested segments. To date, the team has documented over 40,000 safe wildlife crossings, and has spared the lives of countless endangered species.

Making windows safe for birds at home is easy! Some treatments look like little dots, others use stretches of tape – and even temporary solutions like paint or soap make a difference!

The key is to follow the “two-inch rule” so birds recognize the pattern; a single decal doesn’t protect an entire pane of glass. These efforts are spreading through homes, community centers, and businesses – you can be the next to join the movement!

Mary Reynolds was a celebrated garden designer, before realizing that there was more good to be done with landscape design than just achieving artificial beauty.

“Gardens are part of an old world, and I think we need to build a new one.”

Whether you have a small yard, a hundred open acres, or just a flowerbox on a windowsill, there are a few easy steps that anyone can take to turn available land into an natural garden that protects biodiversity.

Saving coral reefs takes a village, and in Hawaii, this community is rallying together to study and protect local corals at risk of bleaching.

But studying coral can sometimes involve breaking off chunks of reef, further damaging the marine ecosystems, so this community focuses their work on “corals of opportunity” that have broken off naturally. Students, volunteers, and scientists work to collect and categorize the broken fragments, which then become candidates to breed before the new coral is reintroduced back into the ocean.

Every summer, thousands of puffin chicks leave their burrows for the sea, but many are led astray by the artificial glow of town lights.

In Iceland’s Vestmannaeyjar, local children and families have formed the Puffling Patrol. Their mission: to rescue lost puffins and guide them safely to the ocean, protecting a species that depends on the dark to find its way.

AI-enabled cameras are being deployed in a part of India that has the highest concentration of tigers on Earth. These trail cams don’t just take a photo of whatever passes by, but analyze it to identify whether it’s a tiger. If it is, the device automatically shares the image with authorities who can alert local villagers, reducing the risk to them, their livestock — and ultimately, the tigers themselves.

After a hard-fought battle by conservationists, Panama recognizes the rights of sea turtles under national law, including their right to a healthy environment.

To figure out which places are critical to the turtles’ well-being, biologist Callie Veelenturf and children from affected communities are tagging dozens of turtles and tracking them by satellite. They hope to use their findings to create a wildlife refuge—and keep their local environment pristine.

Deep in the Panamanian forest, researchers are looking for “lost frogs” — species believed to have gone extinct from a deadly global disease called chytrid, but that may be holding on in the wild. To find them, the scientists deploy recorders through the forest and use artificial intelligence to listen for their calls.

When he was 16 years old, Boyan Slat went diving and discovered more plastic in the ocean than fish. He wondered, “Why can’t we just clean this up?” Since then, his simple question has sparked a remarkable effort to remove plastic from the world’s oceans.

Today, Boyan’s team at The Ocean Cleanup has developed and deployed an open-ocean system that can haul in 7000 kilos of garbage in just a day and a half. Their current target is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The hope is that a fleet of these systems will remove 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040.