Top Good News Stories: Wildlife And Conservation
- Editor OGN Daily
- 13 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Quick summary of all the best news from around the world in November 2025.
Affric Highlands: A valley touted as “the most beautiful glen in Scotland” has joined the UK’s largest rewilding project. The Affric Highlands initiative aims to restore nature across 772 square miles (200,000 hectares) of the Highlands. “This special place is hugely important.”
Remarkable Leadership: Colombia has declared its entire Amazon biome, 42 percent of its territory, a reserve for ‘renewable natural resources’ and will block 43 pending oil blocks and 286 mining requests, halting all new large-scale extraction. Let that sink in for a moment. Colombia just declared all its rainforests, almost half its territory, a reserve. Who’s protecting those rainforests? While in theory it’s the government’s job, in practice, unarmed indigenous patrols have become the most effective forces protecting the Colombian Amazon. More than 50,000 guards now operate year-round where state forces cannot, and their unarmed, community-rooted patrols deter illegal extraction and safeguard isolated tribes.
Remarkable Comeback: China’s ‘extinct’ Pere David’s deer makes historic comeback. Once wiped out in the wild, China’s milu (Pere David’s deer) has staged one of the world’s great wildlife recoveries. From just 39 animals reintroduced from British zoos in 1986, the herd at Dafeng Milu National Nature Reserve has grown to more than 8,500, part of a nationwide population topping 14,000. World Day reports that the research teams (comprised of both Chinese and European institutions) said that "We studied 900+ endangered species across 20 years and this Chinese wetland’s resurrection miracle changed everything we thought we knew about conservation."
US Fishing: Overfishing has been almost entirely stopped in the territorial waters of the United States. An unlikely alliance of fishermen and environmentalists has ended competitive fishing and aligned profits with conservation. NOAA reports 50 stocks rebuilt since 2000, with 94 percent of assessed stocks not subject to overfishing today.
"Huge Milestone": The rare leopard cub has been born at Dartmoor Zoo in England is a "huge milestone" for the critically endangered species - described as the "world's rarest big cat" with only an estimated 120 remaining in the wild. The zoo said the cub's birth was "the culmination of several years of planning and hard work" and "globally important" for conservation efforts.
Macronesia Sanctuary
Governments and conservation NGOs are celebrating the passing of a resolution to create the world’s most ambitious marine sanctuary. Cleverly-named “Macronesia,” the area in the northeastern Atlantic consists of the waters surrounding the Azores, Cape Verde, the Canary Islands, and Madeira. 84 percent of all species of dolphins and whales in the Atlantic pass through Macronesia, making it as significant a site worthy of protection as could be found anywhere in the ocean.
395 Million Acres: A landmark international coalition has committed to formally recognizing nearly 400 million acres of Indigenous and traditional community lands worldwide. The nine countries making this pledge are Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Gabon, Guatemala, the Republic of Congo, Peru, and Venezuela. This impressive commitment to land tenure security empowers millions of Indigenous and local people to be the primary stewards of their ancestral territories, ensuring the permanent protection of globally vital carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots.
Vital Ecological Anchor: The Gabon government and a group of donors have signed an agreement to protect 13,000 sq. miles of the Congo Basin rainforests in the country. The model, known as 'Project Finance for Permanence', aims to finance national parks and tackle elephant poaching while boosting eco-tourism. It is a method that ties funding disbursements to important government policy changes. Gabon is a vital ecological anchor in the vast Congo Basin. Nearly 90 percent of its land is covered in tropical rainforest.
Land Protection: Mongolia launches one of the world’s most ambitious land protection plans. Mongolia has approved a 15-year, $200 million conservation deal that will expand protected areas to 30 percent of the country. Backed by a new fund, the initiative marks a national pivot toward climate resilience and landscape restoration.
China Says Yes: The world’s biggest fishing nation has ratified the High Seas Treaty. China, responsible for 44 percent of all global fishing activity, has finally said yes. The pact establishes a framework for creating marine protected areas, sharing genetic resources and curbing illegal fishing across two-thirds of the ocean. The agreement is the first legally binding global legislation that protects marine life in such areas.