Solutions

Explore the most promising new technologies, tools, and ideas for addressing our planet’s greatest sustainability challenges.

A group of male African lions rests in the Masai-Mara Game Reserve, Kenya, as storm clouds build overhead. Photograph by Denis-Huot Africa’s Conservation Conundrum 05.15.2023 Article - The trophy hunting industry in Africa is dying, and that should concern all of us. What, if anything, replaces it will prove critical for the protection of the continent’s wildlife and wild places.
Two spotted owls perched on a tree in a Northern California forest. Photograph by Danny Hofstadter What Conservation Sounds Like 02.17.2023 Article - New bioacoustic tools are revolutionizing scientific research and enabling much quicker conservation efforts around the globe.
Faces stained from digging in mud, snow geese pause to take measure of their surroundings before returning to their feast. The gray birds are juveniles, the white birds with black wings are adults. Photography by Nancy Crowell Washington’s Runaway Snow Geese 01.24.2023 Article - Mae West said too much of a good thing is wonderful. But she’d never seen the beautiful, marauding snow geese that swoop in each fall to take over Washington State’s Skagit Valley.
Two Iberian lynx peer over rocky outcrops. Photograph by Andoni Canela Bounding Toward Recovery 01.03.2023 Article - The Iberian lynx—one of the world’s most endangered cats—made a giant leap toward a comeback in just a few years, easing the way for other species to follow in its path.
A western leafcutter bee visits a flower in search of pollen, Trinity Alps, California. Photograph by Clay Bolt Making Nature Less Predictable 12.02.2022 Article - In their fight against the homogenization of nature, scientists and farmers are walking well-worn paths and using innovative approaches to help bring native pollinators back to California.
The Sharavati River flows through the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Photograph by Dhritiman Mukherjee Seeing the River for the Fish 11.03.2022 Article - Scientists and local communities are working to save an iconic but little-known species of fish in India—but first, they have to find it.
A lone dragon’s blood tree in the Momi Valley of Socotra. Photograph by Neil Lucas Saving the Dragon’s Blood 10.12.2022 Article - Despite a range of threats, from droughts and cyclones to goats and militarization, Socotra's iconic trees are staging a slow, patient comeback—with the help of the people who know them best.
A Way Forward with Wolves 09.10.2022 Article - Washington state’s long-running conflict between wolves and ranchers mirrors our society’s bigger ideological rifts. Some are trying to bridge the gap—using both horse and technology.
The Saguaro Solution 08.18.2022 Article - Can a massive effort to replant cacti in the Sonoran Desert restore an ecosystem ravaged by fire?
A levee divides a parched salt pond from a burgeoning wetland. Past the Salt 07.14.2022 Article - In San Francisco’s salty South Bay, an ambitious wetlands restoration project is seeking to balance a return to the ecological past with the realities of a changing future.
Methow Valley resident Ken Bevis salvages a deer recently struck by a car. Atonement in the Kitchen 06.03.2022 Article - One way to make sense of the senseless slaughter of roadkill? Salvage it for food.
A greater one-horned rhino surveys its terrain in Kaziranga National Park, India. Photograph by Anup Shah To Rewild a Rhino 05.10.2022 Article - In northeastern India, taking care of a vulnerable species also means looking after the humans who live alongside it.
Ghana’s Sacred Monkeys 04.19.2022 Article - Myth and mystery have long protected two species of monkey and the West African forests they depend on, but for how much longer?
The brook trout, a species native to the eastern United States, made its way across the west in the hands of settlers looking to recreate a small, living piece of their adopted homeland. Photograph by Nick Hawkins The Tale of the Trojan Trout 02.21.2022 Article - Can the introduction of a modified invader save the West’s native fish?
Christine Shreves of Wellfleet, Massachusetts finds a Kemp's ridley sea turtle at Great Hollow Beach on Cape Cod in November. Each fall and winter on the inner shores of Cape Cod, endangered sea turtles wash up, stunned by the cold ocean temperatures and confused by the cape’s hook-like geography. With the help from volunteers and biologists at Mass Audubon, the New England Aquarium, and rehabilitation centers, the turtles are rescued, rehabilitated, and flown to warmer waters. When Turtles Fly 11.30.2021 Article - A massive human-assisted migration lands stranded sea turtles back in warmer seas.
Sign designating the National Wild and Scenic section of the Rio Chama. A River’s Right to Flow 10.22.2021 Article - Indigenous communities and conservationists around the world are challenging the view of water as a human commodity, and fighting to keep this precious resource in the ecosystems it sustains. Can the same approach work in the arid Southwest?
Heeding the Pandemic’s Warnings 08.27.2021 Article - While wildlife trafficking receives more media attention, experts are urging global leaders to clamp down on legal wildlife trade and the significant disease threats it poses.
Mexican wolf "M1296" walks off a sedative after being processed and released back into the field during a January 2016 annual Mexican wolf count based out of Alpine, Arizona. After receiving vaccinations and a new GPS collar, M1296 was reacquainted with his mate not far from where he was initially captured. Photograph by Christina Selby Into the Wild 06.18.2021 Article - North America’s rarest wolf subspecies is finally reclaiming its native territory in the Southwest, thanks in part to a fostering program that places captive-born pups into wild dens.
Scales of Reference - sockeye salmon Scales of Reference 03.11.2021 Article - Collected at the tail end of British Columbia's "silver fever," hundred-year-old salmon scales are now helping conservation scientists reconstruct and better manage the populations of one of Canada's most important fish.
Olms are aquatic, cave-dwelling salamanders found beneath the Dinaric Alps of southern and southeastern Europe. Saving Slovenia’s “Human Fish” 12.15.2020 Article - Scientists in this Central European country are leading the charge to understand and protect a charismatic, cave-dwelling salamander—and the subterranean habitats that supply much of the region's drinking water.
African elephant bulls display displacement behavior during fighting to determine dominance—Addo Elephant National Park, Eastern Cape, South Africa. Africa’s Pandemic-fueled Conservation Crisis 11.17.2020 Article - The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has exposed long-standing weaknesses in how we protect African wilderness and species. But it has also given us an opportunity to vastly improve our approach to these urgent challenges.
A lesser whistling duck forages in Pallikaranai Marsh. Chennai Ran Out of Water — But That’s Only Half the Story 10.30.2020 Article - To reduce flooding and bridge droughts, India’s southern coastal metropolis is using ancient knowledge, community action, and wetlands restoration to harness its monsoon rains.
A male Hainan black-crested gibbon hangs from a branch in the Bawangling National Nature Reserve in Changjiang, South China's Hainan Province. Photograph by Xinhua News Agency The Gibbon’s Tail 10.14.2020 Article - For the world’s rarest ape, survival may depend on stories passed down for centuries among the people of its Chinese island home.
Laurent Lollis looks out over a herd at Buck Island Ranch, with his father, Gene Lollis, in the background. Buck Island Ranch is owned by Archbold Biological Station and is a leading site for rangelands science, including biodiversity and carbon cycling research. Recent studies have shown that grazing of grasses in the humid soils increases the carbon sequestration by the roots. Raising Nature on Florida Ranchlands 08.11.2020 Article - “Rancher vs Environmentalist” has been a longstanding trope. But in the Sunshine State, ranching just may be the last, best hope for ecological salvation.
In Beroboka, a village within the Menabe Antimena Protected Area, children hunt for rhinoceros beetles—a favorite snack. Farming Insects to Save Lemurs 03.19.2020 Article - A reimagined approach to an age-old practice is helping to fight malnutrition in Madagascar—and may have the added benefit of protecting the island nation's imperiled primates and the forests they call home.
The mountain chicken used to fill the valleys of Montserrat and Dominica with its distinctive call. Now, the critically endangered frog is rarely heard on the islands. Photograph by Geoffrey Giller Song of the Mountain Chicken 10.30.2019 Article - These giant frogs—once a delicacy on two Caribbean islands—were almost wiped out by disease and natural disasters. But their resilience and years of dedicated conservation efforts have kept hope for the species alive.
Restoring Harmony in Haida Gwaii 10.15.2019 Article - A collaboration between Haida tradition and Western science may offer a way to bolster both Haida culture and the marine ecosystem intertwined with it.
Margaret Nyambura Mamai, a Maasai woman, places cactus pads infested with cochineal insects into healthy (and partially infested) thickets of prickly pear plants on the Laikipia Plateau. A Plague of Cactus 09.26.2019 Article - Across Kenya’s wildlife-rich Laikipia Plateau, a thorny enemy is advancing. But a tiny sap-sucking insect may help save the region’s animals and people.
Two swallow-tailed kite nestlings hunker down in their nest near the top of a tall pine in Florida’s Withlacoochie State Forest. A Precarious Perch 08.27.2019 Article - Swallow-tailed kites have lost much of their habitat in the southeastern United States, but thanks to an unlikely ally, their numbers are beginning to climb.
Hundreds of Chinook salmon fry swim in a tank at the Bodega Marine Laboratory at the University of California, Davis. Raised in Rice Fields 06.26.2019 Article - California’s Chinook salmon have been losing habitat to agriculture for decades. Now, they’re getting a much-needed boost from strategically flooded fields.
Aerial view of the Kupeke fishpond along Molokai’s southeast shoreline. Photograph by Mickey Pauole Hawaii’s Ancient Aquaculture Revival 06.12.2019 Article - In an ocean state that now imports half of its seafood, a determined group of activists is restoring the age-old aquaculture practices of Native Hawaiians.
A Caribbean spiny lobster emerges onto a coral reef in late afternoon. The Lobster Wars 05.29.2019 Article - In one coastal Mexican town, a sustainable fishery anchors the community. So why has Florida outlawed the same fishing methods?
A cutthroat trout feeds at the surface of a clear lake in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. Photograph by William Hughes Resurrecting the Greenback, Take Two 02.07.2019 Article - After a case of mistaken identity, scientists face an upstream swim to save a fabled fish.
A male Raggiana bird-of-paradise (Paradisaea raggiana) displays in forest canopy of Varirata National Park, Papua New Guinea. Photograph by Nick Garbutt Where the Rainforest Meets the Road 01.08.2019 Article - Community-led conservation has taken root in a remote corner of Papua New Guinea. Now the plan’s architects must ensure that ecological protection and economic prosperity can coexist.
An Indian flying fox peers out of the leaves of a date palm tree in India’s West Bengal, just across the border with Bangladesh. Photograph by Dhritiman Mukherjee The Reservoir 12.12.2018 Article - In Bangladesh, a bat-borne virus you've probably never heard of is poised to become the next pandemic—and medicine alone may not be sufficient to stop it. Is an ecological intervention the answer?
Leaves of a moringa plant and a selection of products made from the moringa Ancient Crops Find New Life 03.07.2017 Article - Feeding the world sustainably—and nutritiously—may require crops that most people have never even heard of.
Photo by Ronald de Hommel Guardian of the Cotton-top 02.07.2017 Article - The landscape architect who became the unlikely steward of Colombia’s critically endangered one-pound monkey
maggot timelapse Maggot Revolution 01.18.2017 Article - Agricultural entrepreneurs want to solve the planet’s livestock-feed crisis by farming insect larvae. Will their scheme fly?
Cancer at Sea 08.23.2016 Article - A mysterious disease afflicting California sea lions is helping scientists understand the causes of cancer in all animals—including humans.
Long leaf pine habitat in the gamelands outside Southern Pines, NC. The Birds and the Bombs 06.28.2016 Article - The fate of the Southeast's longleaf pine forests, and the endangered woodpeckers that depend on them, may rest in the hands of the U.S. military.

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