Wild Hope

Amid collapsing biodiversity worldwide, Mary Reynolds of Ireland is building a movement to turn gardeners into guardians of the planet, by returning our own patch of land to nature and restoring hope that individual action can create lasting change.

As urban expansion quickly replaces natural habitats, facade engineer Alistair Law has created a radically new way to restore native ecosystems for pollinators and create natural spaces for us all within cities--by turning the walls of buildings and construction sites into meadows.

In the face of extreme habitat loss, wildlife biologist Dr. Chris Jenkins puts an ambitious plan in motion to save two uniquely American reptiles, the eastern indigo snake and the gopher tortoise, and the forest they call home.

Three species of sea turtles nesting along the southeast coast of Florida face a range of threats to their survival. Thanks to conservation measures, greens and loggerheads are thriving, but leatherbacks remain at risk. Researchers know little about them, so they’re pioneering ways to study them, and safeguard their habitats.

Derek Gow is a farmer in western England, or at least he was. Now, he’s using his decades of experience in conservation to return his land to its original state, as a healthy, biodiverse ecosystem. He’s also breeding native species now rare in Britain for reintroduction across the country.

Today, manatees are experiencing what scientists call a UME (an unusual mortality event) where some 1000 of them are dying each year; a crisis for a population of only 7000. But citizens in the manatee stronghold of Crystal River have pioneered an approach to restore critical seagrass that now shows promise to help the gentle giants throughout their range.

Kira Hughes has witnessed how a warming ocean killed up to 80% of the coral in reefs around Oahu over the past ten years. But she and her colleagues, along with help from the local community, are now breeding the thermally-resistant corals to survive future “bleaching” events--and are already installing them back in the wild.

Petrels and shearwaters are sea birds that spend most of their lives out over the open ocean, but they return to land once a year to breed and raise their young. Conservationists on the island of Maui are safeguarding their rookeries by installing predator-proof fences around them and attracting the birds inside with decoys and audio recordings.

Humans have introduced new species of plants and animals since they first arrived on the Hawai’ian islands, and these invaders have devastated many local species, including birds known as the honeycreepers. Now, countermeasures to mitigate the threats of predators and another invasive species--a mosquito that carries avian malaria--are helping to protect these amazing, endangered birds.

There’s a park in the center of Rio de Janeiro that’s five times the size of New York’s Central Park, but it boasts only one-third of the wild species that used to live in it. Today, there’s a group of scientists who are reintroducing wildlife--including monkeys, tortoises and rodents called agoutis--and restoring functionality back to the ecosystem.

In the past 50 years, a deadly fungus known as chytrid has decimated amphibian populations around the world and left a staggering 40% at risk of extinction. In Panama, scientists are fighting back, breeding insurance populations of vulnerable species in a manmade rainforest and discovering promising new avenues to develop a vaccine against the threat.

In the past 40 years, golden lion tamarins became a symbol of conservation success when a worldwide breeding and reintroduction program brought their numbers in the wild from 200 to over 3700. Then, yellow fever jumped from humans to the primates and began to decimate their population. Now, an innovative vaccination program has not only stabilized the population, but is now allowing it to recover.

Mauricio Ruiz planted his first tree when he was five years old. By the time he was fourteen, he was putting out local fires to protect the forest. In the 24 years since, he has built an organization that has reconnected 20,000 hectares of forest, planted 4.5 million trees, partnered with over 1000 local people, and is now looking to speed up reforestation by using drones.

Brazil has over a million miles of roads, and Fernanda Abra has devoted herself to making them less dangerous to local wildlife and biodiversity. Through over 30 projects across the country, she works to minimize roadkill and habitat fragmentation by installing canopy bridges above and underpasses beneath major roadways and railways.

More than 35 percent of land in Belize is protected, and that’s been good for the jaguar population. But for them to thrive, the cats need to move from one safe area in the north to another in the south across a landscape of farms and towns. Local conservationists are learning where the cats go and buying the land they rely on to create a wild corridor that can give the cats safe passage.

Marine biologist Callie Veenlenturf came to the Pearl Islands to study sea turtles, but soon helped spark passage of remarkable laws that grant legal rights to nature and the turtles themselves. Now, she and the local fishing community are tagging turtles to find where they go and using their data and the new laws to create a wildlife refuge for whales, whale sharks and other marine species.

Black-footed ferrets have come back from near extinction thanks to breeding, cloning and reintroduction programs that have brought them back to the western prairie. Now, these wild populations are threatened by a plague that targets the prairie dogs they depend on for food--and even the ferrets themselves. Their best chance? To vaccinate both predator and prey to keep both populations alive.

Golden eagles are falling victim to deadly lead poisoning introduced to the wild by another potent hunter: us. Across the nation, fragments from lead bullets in the entrails hunters leave behind are poisoning eagles and the other wildlife that scavenge them. But there’s a simple solution--copper bullets--that prevent the birds and even the hunters themselves from being exposed to the deadly metal.

At the age of 18, Boyan Slat founded The Ocean Cleanup and set out to clean plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. 10 years later, they’re installing catchment systems at the mouths of rivers to stop plastic pollution of the seas at their source. Meet Alecia Beaufort of Clean Harbors Jamaica as her team helps install one such system in Kingston harbor.

Cougar P-22 inspired an effort to build the world’s largest wildlife crossing in LA and spark a national campaign to support crossings and corridors. Biologists pinpointed the vital location for an overpass to be built to restitch an entire ecosystem. Now, P-22 continues to inspire the very construction of this landmark crossing and expands what’s possible for urban wildlife coexistence.

In parts of India, the greater adjutant stork was an ill omen, and so has become endangered. But when Purnima Devi witnessed fellow villagers chop down a tree crowned with the storks’ nests, she decided to do something about it. Today, 10,000 women across the region have banded together to protect nests, raise fledglings and run educational programs explaining the benefits of the storks.

Thanks to extraordinary conservation efforts, nearly 3200 wild tigers live in India. Researchers and tech entrepreneurs have teamed up to deploy camera traps that use AI to recognize the big cats (and even poachers!) in the photos they take. They even notify authorities within 30 seconds to warn nearby communities and reduce the threat to villagers, livestock, and the tigers themselves.

Along the tropical coast of Gujarat, fishing communities have long used oil from whale sharks to waterproof their boats. Then, a spiritual leader likened the sharks to daughters who come home to give birth to their children. The number of sharks that were harvested fell from 900 a year to fewer than 10--and that gives the next generation of world’s largest fish a much greater chance.

Elephants often move great distances along paths handed down from one generation to the next; but sometimes crops or homes are in the way. An organization in Karnataka has helped relocate entire human communities to establish a wilderness corridor. Today, 13 countries have agreed to consider elephants’ movements as they plan infrastructure, with a goal of creating corridors across southern Asia.