Today's Good News | OGN Daily

Kick-starting the week with a global round up of positive news nuggets.

Man disguised as a giant Eurasian curlew — Credit: Jo Wright

Raising Awareness

Residents of northern England did a double take when they spotted an unusually large bird wandering around the countryside last weekend. Measuring ten feet long from beak tip to tail, the enormous creature had a long, slender bill and big brown eyes. But the eye-catching bird wasn’t some new, super-sized species. It was a man dressed in costume, trekking conspicuously to raise awareness about the plight of one of the United Kingdom’s most iconic and threatened birds: the Eurasian curlew, the largest wading bird in Europe. With his attention-grabbing walk, Trevelyan also wanted to raise money for local curlew conservation projects and encourage residents to get involved in looking out for the birds.

New Detroit Forest

Arborists are turning vacant land on Detroit’s eastside into a small urban forest, not of trees indigenous to the city but giant sequoias, the world’s largest trees that can live for thousands of years. The project on four lots will not only replace long-standing blight with majestic trees, but could also improve air quality and help preserve the trees that are native to California’s Sierra Nevada, where they are threatened by ever-hotter wildfires. Detroit is the pilot city for the Giant Sequoia Filter Forest.

Conservation Success

After five decades of restoration work, the native trout population of Lake Champlain, one of the largest lakes in the United States - which straddles the states of New York and Vermont - is now self-sustaining. This success offers a model for restoring top predator species in large freshwater ecosystems.

City of London

Cycling in the City of London has surged by 57 percent since 2022, with cycles now making up 39 percent of daytime traffic. Motor vehicles have declined to just one-third of their 1999 levels, while cycling has increased six-fold. People walking, cycling, and wheeling now account for three-quarters of all observed travel activity, according to a new report.

Collection of Hermès handbags — Credit: Hermes

Hermès Ramps Up

You may see a few more Birkins out in the world over the next few years - if you and people you know can get your hands on one, of course. Hermès is continuing to ramp up its handbag production in France in the face of its soaring sales and high demand. And to help get them into the arms of its clients at a faster rate, the fashion house is opening four new factories throughout the country, reports WWD. It will bring the masion’s total number of leather-goods factories in France to 30. Each one employs around 260 artisans to bring its bags to life.

China Renewables

China's renewable surge displaces coal power in first three months of 2025, reports Climate Energy Finance. Renewable energy generation jumped 26.7 percent in the first quarter of 2025, while coal power generation dropped 4.1 percent year-over-year despite overall electricity demand growing. The growth in renewables helped lift clean energy's share of the generation mix to a record 39 percent, up from 34 percent during the same months last year.

"Each and every one of you has the power, the will, and the capacity to make a difference in the world in which you live." Harry Belafonte

On This Day

28 April 1947: Norwegian ethnologist and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and a small crew set sail from Peru aboard the primitive raft Kon-Tiki and arrived in Polynesia three and a half months later. The expedition aimed to prove Heyerdahl's theory that the Polynesian islands were populated by people from South America, rather than Asia.