The stretch of the Murray where the stories come out at night
Old eucalypts, an inland beach and a night walk through Bangerang country, on the quiet stretch of the Murray between Cobram and Tocumwal.
A hundred years of O’Reilly’s, on the mountain called Woonoongoora
Australia’s first treetop walkway, four generations of one family, and a rainforest that was World Heritage before most of us were paying attention.
What have you changed for a healthier planet?
The swap you made that turned out better than what it replaced. We would love to print it, and the clever new ones you have found.
One tiny marsupial turned out to be four
The long-tailed planigale, one of the smallest marsupials on earth, has just been sorted into four separate species, and one of them is brand new.
Twenty nine thousand names, and an island comes home
A ninety nine year development concession over Manoel Island has ended, and the waterfront is going back to the people who asked for it.
Nepal counted its tigers, and there are 429
One hundred and twenty one in 2009. Four hundred and twenty nine this year, in a country you could drive across in a day.
Now the river keeps its own record
A monitor powered by the river it sits in, reading the water every ten minutes and seeing trouble three days out.
Glass a bird can see
A window is invisible to a bird. The new answer is a pattern etched into the glass itself, which the bird reads as solid and you barely notice at all.
The towns that turned their lights off
Above the Warrumbungles the night sky is protected like a national park, because it is one.
Replenishing the soul in Rishikesh
Where the Ganges leaves the mountains, the whole town is arranged around rest.
One hundred species, and the money to bring them home
A new 200 million dollar fund has one job: carry one hundred threatened animals and plants all the way back.
The giants are coming home to Floreana
After 180 years, giant tortoises walk Floreana Island again, the first of twelve species being welcomed home.
The sleeping child wakes up
Guatemala calls its rarest lizard the sleeping child. A zoo in the capital is giving it a future.
The butterflies that came back to the boy
A ten year old in Kobe wondered if his butterflies remembered him. The answer is now heading for a science journal.
The prize for the world beneath our feet
The Nobel of the environment just went to the scientist mapping the fungal internet under the forests.
The mines that warm the town above them
Gateshead dug coal for two centuries. Now the flooded old tunnels warm the town, cleanly, from below.
The nets that catch a cloud
In Chile's dry north, a farming community harvests its water straight out of the morning fog.
The forests that fit in a schoolyard
Tiny, dense, wild: pocket forests are springing up in 62 cities, and the children are doing the planting.
The park where the oldest living things keep watch
Bristlecone pines older than the pyramids, alpine lakes, and hardly a queue in sight.
Ten minutes, shoes off
The newest research on feeling better is also the oldest advice in the world: go outside, take your shoes off, and stand on the earth for a little while.
The island that was mined bare grew back
Fifty years ago Lady Elliot Island was a stripped coral cay. Now it is a Green Zone sanctuary you can visit, and its custodian just won a lifetime achievement award.
The year the ocean introduced itself
Scientists found 1,121 new marine species in a single year, and they are just getting started.
Australia just met its own pollinators
The first national picture of who pollinates Australia has been drawn, and the native bees look like heroes in waiting.
When the water comes back, this little duck knows first
The wetlands filled this year, and the little zebra striped nomad arrived in its thousands.
One puffling, thirty years in the waiting
On the cliffs of Dorset, volunteers watched a puffin chick leave its nest for the first time in three decades.
The Perth pair growing tomorrow's plastic in a seaweed tank
An ocean scientist and her cofounder ferment seaweed into little pearls that behave like plastic, then vanish like a leaf.
The seeds that think the lightning came
In Cairns, a Maiawali inventor and his cofounder wake seeds with gentle electricity, the way storms have for ten thousand years.
The basketball courts that drink the storm
In Queens, New York, the neighbourhood's brightest new courts have a secret: when the big rain comes, they swallow it.
The little docket that is leaving the till
The shiny receipt cannot be recycled and mostly is not read. An Australian inventor is retiring it, and you can help at any checkout.
How to visit the Torres Strait, and how to ask
Two islands you can simply fly to, and the form you fill in for the rest. A practical guide to going north, told in the region's own words. Photograph by Oliver Strewe.
The satellites keeping watch over the desert elephants
In Namibia, a message from space now helps farmers and free roaming elephants share the same dry rivers in peace.
The Goddesses of the Forest
One hundred and eight women guard Kaziranga's rhinos, and the poachers have gone quiet.
The sacred bird that came home to Japan
Japan's toki was gone from the wild. This May, a crowd in Hakui watched eight fly free in the very place they were last seen.
The divers planting a forest by hand, in winter
At Eaglehawk Neck, people come from all over the world to spend four cold weeks putting giant kelp back on the reef.
The river that got one hundred and eleven villages back
In Azamgarh, village councils cleaned eighty nine kilometres of the Tamsa, then planted sixty five thousand fruit trees along her banks.
Never too late to dive in
The Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage ask that you be at least sixty four. The rest of us can start with a bag and a pair of gloves.
Sleep in the lighthouse keeper's cottage, nine kilometres out to sea
No cars, no shops, no road. Barunguba Montague Island has a granite lighthouse, eight thousand penguins and two cottages you can book.
The satellites that smell smoke first
A new constellation is being built for one job only: finding wildfires while they are still small enough to stop.
Type in your postcode, find out what belongs there
Two free Australian things: a tool that knows what will thrive in your patch, and volunteers who will come and look at your garden.
The cargo ships that remembered the wind
After eight years at sea, the spinning sails on one bulk carrier have saved over a thousand tonnes of fuel, and they are still turning.
The rope bridges built so sloths never have to touch the ground
On the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica there are now 378 of them, strung tree to tree above the roads.
The run that ends in the sea
This Sunday about 90,000 people pour down the hill to Bondi, and Sydney lets winter go.
Mako, the robot planting a meadow underwater
Hand planting seagrass manages about five hectares a year. This machine is built for five hectares a day.
The Shanghai fuel made from thin air and water
A young company just broke ground on a factory whose ingredients are captured carbon dioxide and hydrogen split from water.
The frozen library that hopes never to lend a book
Inside a mountain in the Arctic sit 1.4 million kinds of seed, and this year two countries added theirs for the first time.
The ocean beyond every border just got its first rulebook
Two thirds of the ocean finally has a rulebook. And the closer that care comes to the shoreline, the more of us get to watch the healing.
The scientists brightening clouds to shade the reef
A fine mist of seawater, a slightly brighter cloud, and a little less summer sun on the coral below.
New York is growing 25 million trees, starting with the nurseries
Progress is progress, and the state just put 46 million dollars behind growing the trees before planting them.
The beauty counter learns to refill
The loveliest new habit in beauty is the one our grandmothers had all along, keep the container.
The bird that needed the trees to grow old first
A hornbill gone from Gir for sixty years is nesting there again, in hollows the forest took decades to make.
The walk that Year 10 built
A 262 kilometre loop through the far south west of Victoria, cut by school students and kept going by volunteers.
Two nights in a cabin, and nobody can tell whose grandchildren are whose
A Minnesota park district built a camp around the pair nobody usually plans for.
The island where the crabs have right of way
Two tonnes of rubbish, a wharf jump into 28 degree water, and an island that hands the road to its crabs.
Thirty eight pups, and a coastline getting its sea lions back
One of the world's rarest sea lions has just reached a number the Otago coast has not seen in about 150 years.
Hedgehogs can hear a great deal more than we knew
Twenty hedgehogs, tested gently and home the next night, revealed a whole layer of sound we cannot hear.
Milan gave its council chamber to the swifts and the bees
For one Friday in June, about fifty wild species had someone speaking for them inside the city hall.
Crushed rock, young trees and 290 people with tape measures
Volunteers on a Welsh hillside spent four years measuring barcoded saplings, and produced a scientific first.
A river opened up again, 160 miles of it
Three dams gone, a river handed back to itself, and a rather clever gate at the very last barrier.
Fix it, find it, or borrow it
A new right to repair arrived across Europe this week, and a whole generation was already there waiting.
Give the food that needs eating its own shelf
An Australian idea so simple it sounds like nothing, and in a household trial it cut food waste by 40 per cent.
The underwater highway at Julian Rocks
Our founder's favourite swim in the sea off Byron Bay: leopard sharks, flying turtles, and the community that won this reserve in 1982.
The machine that makes drinking water out of thin air
Two American neighbourhoods are about to drink water pulled straight out of the sky, using a Nobel winning material.
The koalas that grew their diversity back
Victoria's koalas came back from about five hundred animals, and what happened next surprised everybody.
The corridors that let the pandas walk home
Six green pathways now join thirteen panda families that spent decades stranded apart.
The dolphin that swam in a warmer Antarctica
A thirty million year old skull has come to Canberra, carrying news from a very different south.
The magpie family next door
They hold the same patch of ground for twenty years, and they know exactly who you are.
The young farmers rewriting life on the land
Buffalo dairies, soil first grazing, and a country school where the classroom is a working farm.
Seventeen good ideas and a room to hold them in
In Canberra it turned out that connection needed very little: a venue, an instructor and an open door.
The concrete recipe that just passed its biggest test
A Paris development of 151 homes has been built entirely with a low carbon cement, and nobody on site had to change how they work.
The green bin that becomes a paddock
Food scraps across New South Wales are about to start a far better second life.
The science that needs your backyard
A phone, a window and ten minutes are enough to make you part of the research.
The reef where the fish dance
Nic's first Places to Explore column: a volunteer cleanup week in the Cocos Keeling Islands.
The sacred forest kept a beautiful secret
A revered little forest in Nepal shelters one of the rarest mammals on Earth.
The little vans bringing forgotten railways back to life
France's clever electric van switches from road to rail to wake up sleeping train lines.
The quiet heater that keeps winning winter
Four years running, heat pumps have outsold gas furnaces in the United States.
The library where you borrow a drill instead of buying one
Libraries are lending the things we only need sometimes, and the idea is spreading.
The sanctuary where the rarest vultures are raising chicks again
After ten years away, Cambodia's rarest vulture just flew back in.
The forest that is learning to listen
Indigenous led teams in Peru are guarding wildlife with tiny AI ears in the canopy.
The battery made of rust, iron and air
One hundred hours of stored power from the cheapest ingredients on Earth.
The farmers healing their fields with fungi
Pilot farms are seeding their soils with fungal networks.
The islands you can only reach by boat
Five wild islands an hour from Los Angeles, kelp cathedrals below.
Perth's rubbish is now powering 55,000 homes
What cannot be recycled no longer goes to waste, or to landfill.
The Amazon is breathing easier this year, protection up 38 per cent
Brazil's best six months for the rainforest in a decade.
Britain's rivers are getting their engineers back
After 400 years away, the beavers are building again.
Europe just set a record for setting rivers free
Six hundred barriers gone in a year, and the fish are already home.
One train at sunset, seventy trucks off the road
Every grain train is a highway's worth of trucks that never left the depot.
Stockholm's flying ferry passed every test, now the world is queueing
It lifts above the water, halves the commute, and sips power.
The tree seed that scrubs plastic from drinking water
Crush a seed, clean a glass: nature's own water filter just aced its exam.
Doctors are prescribing birdsong, and the wilder the better
The newest medicine on the scripts pad is a walk somewhere green and alive.
The solar panel that hangs off the balcony rail
Three million German homes are plugging straight into the sun, no roof required.
The cafes where broken things get a second chance
Free community cafes are mending toasters, jeans and chairs, and the only payment is a smile.
The solar panel that turns plastic rubbish into clean fuel
Cambridge chemists use sunlight to turn old plastic and water into clean hydrogen fuel.
Paris made its river swimmable again
For the second summer running, Parisians are swimming in the Seine.
The Simpson Desert returns to the care of its first people
An area two thirds the size of Tasmania becomes Australia's newest Indigenous Protected Area.
The day the logging stopped for nine emu eggs
Fewer than fifty coastal emus remain in northern NSW. Then a forestry officer found a nest.
The kākāpō just had the best breeding season in its history
More than one hundred chicks for a parrot with only 235 adults left in the world.
The largest animals on Earth are quietly coming back
Blue whales and fin whales are being seen again off southern Africa.
The forest that grew back while nobody was looking
Massachusetts went from about 90 per cent cleared to 60 per cent forested, by being left alone.
The building material you can grow in a paddock
Klara Marosszeky has spent 25 years proving hemp and lime can build warm, breathing homes.
The Karajarri people just became guardians of their own sea country
Australia's first Sea Country Indigenous Protected Area covers 237,489 hectares of Kimberley coast and ocean.
A California beach is going wild again, and it is still yours
Santa Monica has rewilded eight acres of its famous sands into living dunes, and a threatened shorebird is back.
A clever new way to turn seawater into drinking water
A team at the University of Rochester has found a gentler way to desalinate the sea, powered by sunlight and leaving no toxic brine behind.
London welcomes the storks home after 600 years
For the first time in roughly six centuries, white storks are set to fly over London again, part of a bright plan to bring nature back into the city.
In Ukraine, the wild horses are coming back
Near the Black Sea, a team is breathing life back into old farmland, welcoming home wild horses, deer and kulan, and this spring, a rare foal.
Illinois makes rewilding the law
Illinois has become the first US state to write rewilding into law, giving nature room to return across the prairie state.
The quiet joy of rewilding your garden
Mow a little less and plant a few natives, and any backyard can draw around seventy percent more bees and butterflies.
Plastic Free July: small swaps, big wave
An Australian born movement now reaching millions, one easy swap at a time. Perfect timing to give it a go this month.
The solar machines catching river plastic before it reaches the sea
Most ocean plastic arrives by river. A fleet of solar powered machines is stopping it at the source.
The world's rarest wombat has a new joey
A trail camera in outback Queensland has captured precious cargo: one of only 450 northern hairy nosed wombats, with a joey in her pouch.
Leopards are making a comeback in West Africa
In Benin's Pendjari National Park, leopard numbers have more than tripled in six years. Researchers call it a win against long odds.
Solar panels between the train tracks
A Swiss pilot has spent a year proving a working railway can double as a solar farm. Italy wants one next.
Sea turtles are bouncing back
Decades of protection are paying off. In Indonesia's Kei Islands, turtle and nest harvesting has fallen 85%, and populations are rebounding.
Rio's 'empty forest' is filling with life again
Conservationists are returning the animals a forest needs to thrive: agoutis, tortoises, howler monkeys, and macaws not seen there for 200 years.
A new ocean sanctuary the size of France
French Polynesia granted its highest level of protection to 520,000 km² of ocean, where no mining, trawling or industrial fishing is allowed.
Europe hits a clean energy tipping point
For the first time, wind and solar generated more of the EU's electricity than fossil fuels, a milestone reached years ahead of expectations.
£1bn for community owned clean energy
The UK's new Local Power Plan is its biggest ever public investment in locally owned wind and solar, so profits flow straight back to neighbourhoods.
A turning point for the world's mangroves
Coastal communities and conservationists are restoring mangrove forests, vital nurseries for sea life and powerful natural carbon stores.