Civil society

Redwoods with sun shining through

Yurok Tribe becomes the first to manage land with U.S. National Park Service

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California’s Yurok Tribe, which had 90% of its territory taken from it during the gold rush of the mid-1800s, will be getting a slice of its land back to serve as a new gateway to Redwood national and state parks visited by 1 million people a year. The Yurok will be the first Native people to manage tribal land with the National Park Service under a historic memorandum of understanding signed by the tribe, Redwood national and state parks, and the non-profit Save the Redwoods League.

Silhouette of person looking at stars

Oregon area named world’s largest dark sky sanctuary

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The Oregon outback is now home to the world’s largest dark sky sanctuary, offering pristine views of the night sky across 2.5 million acres. The Oregon outback international dark sky sanctuary received the certification this week, becoming the largest of 19 sites around the world with the same designation. The sanctuary covers Lake County in south-eastern Oregon, a remote area roughly half the size of New Jersey, and could eventually expand to include more than 11 million acres.

Young trees

The TREES program has planted tens of millions of trees across Africa since 2015

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Since it was founded in 2015, the Trees for the Future (TREES) mass reforestation campaign has convinced and enabled thousands of farmers to plant tens of millions of trees every year. The program spans nine African countries ranging from Senegal and Mali to Tanzania and Kenya. In less than 10 years, it has reportedly restored a combined area of more than 41,000 hectares, which is about seven times the size of Manhattan.

Satellite over Earth

New satellite pinpoints global methane pollution in real-time

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MethaneSAT, developed by the Environmental Defense Fund in partnership with the New Zealand Space Agency, is the size of a washing machine and cost $88 million to build and launch. While part of its mission is to spot polluters, the other side of the coin is that it can verify that others are indeed managing those emissions in a responsible fashion. Stemming methane leaks is the fastest single way to curb the escalation of average global temperatures, according to The Guardian.

Dominican Republic forested landscape

The Dominican Republic reforests a fifth of the country in 10 years

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Plan Yaque, founded in 2009, brings together 30 organizations to conserve the Yaque River basin, the Dominican Republic’s lifeline. The plan’s simplicity rests in convincing landowners that reforestation is not only an ecological need but also beneficial to their well-being. By 2019, Plan Yaque and other environmental efforts have restored 18 percent of damaged land, ranking as Latin America’s second-largest land recovery.

Elephant

2023 was the first year without elephant poaching in Republic of Congo’s Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park

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The park, which celebrated its 30th anniversary on December 31 of 2023, also shared an exciting conservation milestone: 2023 was the first year without any elephant poaching detected. “We didn’t detect any elephants killed in the Park this year, a first for the Park since [we] began collecting data. This success comes after nearly a decade of concerted efforts to protect forest elephants from armed poaching in the Park,” Ben Evans, the Park’s management unit director, said in a press release.

5 River Delta Resource Center

$15 million land purchase to protect 8,000 acres of “America’s Amazon” in south Alabama

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Nearly 8,000 acres of Alabama’s most sensitive and ecologically important land is being preserved forever, thanks to a multi-million dollar collaboration involving The Nature Conservancy in Alabama, Patagonia, and an undisclosed donor. The Nature Conservancy in Alabama says it has closed a $15 million+ deal to buy 7,990 acres in Clarke County at the head of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, often called “America’s Amazon” for its remarkable biodiversity and wildlife.

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