SMILE NEWS / 55
Stories that lift your spirits a little, collected with their sources.
In Chile's Patagonia National Park, a women-led ranger team returned 13 Darwin's rheas to the wild in April 2026. Working with the Rewilding Chile Foundation, they care for the birds around the clock; surveys once estimated only about 11 to 15 remained.
source: MongabayA new dinosaur species, Musango matusadonaensis, has been described from rocks about 210 million years old in Matusadona National Park on the shore of Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe. The bipedal, not-yet-adult animal was about 4.5 metres long, and the find suggests Zimbabwe's dinosaur fauna differed from South Africa's.
source: Phys.org (The Conversation)More than 20 students from Australia, Botswana, the US and the UK joined a one-week field course in the World Heritage-listed Okavango Delta. Running since 2017, the course has them take part in yearly animal and bird surveys and collect data on the wetland's health.
source: ABC News (Australia)A Jurassic fossil from Inner Mongolia, China, has been described in the journal Nature as Megacauda sungei, a platypus-like creature. With webbed feet and a flattened tail, it likely ate fish and salamanders and is the earliest known semiaquatic mammaliaform.
source: ABC News (Australia)A team including Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew described a new giant water lily, Victoria colombiana, from the Inírida region of Guainía, Colombia. The search began with an Instagram photo; the plant's pads reach up to 2 meters across, and an estimated 30 to 50 grow in the wild.
source: Phys.org (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)On the Turtle Islands in Sabah, Malaysia, protected since 1977, green turtle nesting has tripled since the 1970s to more than 20,000 nests a year. On nearby Omadal island, a 20-member women's cooperative has moved eggs to a hatchery since 2012.
source: Phys.org (AFP)A team at TU Wien in Austria has built a nuclear clock that keeps time by using lasers to track changes in the nuclei of thorium-229 crystals, publishing the work in Nature. It would drift by just one second over 30 million years, and the team expects to improve it further.
source: ABC News (Australia)A study by the University of Exeter and the Seychelles Islands Foundation estimates that almost 183,000 Aldabra giant tortoises live on Aldabra Atoll. The species is reported to have numbered fewer than 1,000 in the 19th century, and this first rigorous atoll-wide estimate exceeds the roughly 100,000 figure long cited.
source: Phys.org (University of Exeter)In Clayoquot Sound off Canada's west coast, the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation and partners launched a kelp restoration project in early 2026. More than 4,200 square meters of new kelp habitat have been planted, with sea otters helping the forests recover.
source: MongabayResearchers from Chiang Mai University and Kasetsart University identified 16 new species of Aureobasidium fungi living in 31 kinds of flowering plants in northern Thailand. Two of the species were named in honor of prominent Thai mycologists.
source: MongabayThe Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra has grafted cuttings of Eucalyptus recurva, which survives as just six plants in the wild, and successfully grown copies of four of them. The clones form a backup population for trees estimated to be 3,000 to 6,000 years old.
source: ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to research on optogenetics, which uses light to switch the activity of nerve cells on and off. The laureates are Karl Deisseroth of Stanford University, Peter Hegemann of Humboldt University and Georg Nagel of the University of Würzburg.
source: ABC News (Australia)Russian and Kyrgyz teams are exploring an old settlement beneath Lake Issyk-Kul that may have covered up to five square kilometres. Finds include a decorated public building and a child's chamber pot called a tuvaq, a design still used in Central Asia today.
source: Phys.org (AFP)Researchers have installed 100 terracotta burrows at two sites for the Canberra grassland earless dragon, of which fewer than 100 remain in the wild. Summer ground temperatures can reach 70C, and the dragons took up the burrows quite quickly.
source: ABC News (Australia)The Natural History Museum of San Marcos University announced a new lizard species, Liolaemus archipensis, found above 4,800 metres in Peru's southern Arequipa region. The small lizard measures 6 to 8 centimetres.
source: Gulf News (AFP)Over 15 years, more than 11,000 wētāpunga, New Zealand's heaviest insect, have been bred and released through 45 translocations to 10 new wild sites. At least four generations have been born on Motuora and Tiritiri Matangi islands, confirming the species has become established there.
source: Phys.orgThe UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sport decided to keep free entry for overseas visitors at 14 national institutions, including the British Museum. Free admission has been in place since 2001.
source: Good News NetworkA study by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology found that giving corals beneficial bacteria prevented bleaching during a heat wave in the Red Sea. The work was published in Cell Reports.
source: MongabayUganda will co-manage the Ishasha sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park, known for its tree-climbing lions, with the Wildlife Conservation Society for 10 years. The area covers about 500 square kilometres.
source: MongabayIn the World Heritage town of Weimar, the east wing of the city palace, closed for renovation since 2018, reopened to the public from October 2. Visitors can again see the Poets' Rooms named after Goethe and Schiller, as well as the palace chapel.
source: Klassik Stiftung WeimarMwambao, a network through which Tanzania's coastal fishers look after their own sea, began in 2008 with $25,000 and has grown into an organisation with an annual budget of about $3.5 million. Working with the government, it runs timed fishing closures and seaweed-farming training for women.
source: MongabayNew Zealand's Department of Conservation announced that the success of its recovery programme for the wētāpunga, the country's heaviest insect, has been documented in the New Zealand Journal of Zoology. Over 15 years, 11,000 captive-bred wētā were moved in 45 translocations to 10 new wild sites, and the species' status improved from Nationally Endangered to Nationally Increasing.
source: New Zealand Department of ConservationOn Superagui Island in Brazil's Paraná state, three endangered black-faced lion tamarins received yellow fever vaccines, a first for the species. Fewer than 400 are thought to remain in the wild.
source: MongabayOn September 21 in New York, 15 ancient Greek objects were handed over to Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni. They include 7th-century BCE bronze helmets, and some will be reunited with finds from the same excavation at the Heraklion museum.
source: Good News NetworkAt Hadrian's Wall in England, the stump of the roughly 150-year-old Sycamore Gap tree, felled in 2023, now has a ring of new shoots about three feet tall. The National Trust has given 49 saplings grown from its seeds to communities across the UK.
source: Good News NetworkThe University of Cambridge reports that excavations near the Vatican uncovered 20 Anglo-Saxon coins minted between 899 and 955. More Anglo-Saxon coins from this period have now been found in Rome than papal coins, shedding light on life in the city's English quarter.
source: University of CambridgeAbout 240 community-run conservancies now cover roughly 15% of Kenya. In the Maasai Mara they have grown from 8 covering 870 square kilometres in 2012 to about 25 covering some 1,700 square kilometres in 2026.
source: MongabaySamples from an August 2025 expedition to the Mar del Plata submarine canyon off Argentina have yielded 57 new marine species and five new genera. Twenty early-career taxonomists examined them in Buenos Aires in July 2026, finding 20 copepods and 22 sea cucumbers and crinoids among others.
source: CONICET (National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Argentina)In August 2026, more than 650 southern mountain yellow-legged frogs, an endangered species, were released at two sites in California's San Gabriel Mountains. The frogs were raised by the Aquarium of the Pacific and the Los Angeles Zoo, after a 2023 survey counted fewer than 200 in the southern population.
source: MongabayIn Panama's Darién forest, four Indigenous Wounaan and Emberá-Wounaan villages used sound recorders and camera traps to monitor 18,000 hectares and documented more than 200 species. Jaguars and Baird's tapirs were among them, and the data is being used to open new funding for forest conservation.
source: MongabayResearchers from the University of Oxford and Duke University used acoustics and AI to study two painted Etruscan tombs from the fifth century BCE in central Italy. The Tomb of the Blue Demons produced exceptionally long reverberation, suggesting the tombs were immersive ritual spaces.
source: Phys.orgKiwi are living in the hills around Wellington, New Zealand, for the first time in 150 years, and there are now more than 300 of them. The community-led Capital Kiwi Project has moved in more than 250 birds since late 2022 and keeps predators in check with over 5,300 traps.
source: MongabayCambodia's environment ministry has designated a 315-hectare wetland at the northern end of the Cardamom Mountains as a genetic conservation area. At least 40 critically endangered Siamese crocodiles are thought to live there, and Indigenous Chorng communities have helped the effort.
source: The GuardianDNA from 30 Nubian giraffes in Boma and Badingilo national parks showed relatively high genetic diversity and low inbreeding. Researchers say South Sudan is a genetic stronghold for the subspecies.
source: MongabayLarge swarms of bogong moths, listed as endangered in 2021, are being seen across New South Wales. About 800 sightings were logged on a citizen-science platform within a few days, and researchers say it is a sign that something is going right.
source: ABC News (Australia)In Hanle, a village 4,500 metres up in Ladakh, four local women work as astro-ambassadors, guiding visitors through the night sky with telescopes. In 2022 Hanle became India's first Dark Sky Reserve.
source: BBC NewsThe National Trust announced that Sandilands nature reserve on the Lincolnshire coast, a former golf course turned into wetland and grassland over six years, officially opens on September 26. The 30-hectare site saw avocets and oystercatchers nest and breed successfully this year.
source: National TrustThe planting of about 2,000 kauri seedlings in Auckland's Waitākere Ranges has been completed. The seedlings were grown from seeds of some 650 healthy mother trees, in the hope they will resist kauri dieback.
source: RNZThe RSPB is celebrating 20 years at Winterbourne Downs in Wiltshire, where it has restored more than 200 hectares of chalk grassland. Stone-curlew pairs rose from two to a peak of 11, and more than 100 young have fledged there since 2006.
source: RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds)Several thousand juvenile Atlantic sturgeon were released into the Ina River at Goleniów, Poland, on September 18, with hundreds of local people including schoolchildren taking part. The species vanished from the Baltic Sea and its tributaries in the 20th century, and more than 20,000 young fish are planned for release in 2027.
source: Rewilding EuropeIn June, researchers photographed and filmed a single Ghana cuckooshrike in Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, the first record of the species since 2013. The bird had been on the list of 'lost birds' not documented for more than a decade.
source: MongabayA cuneiform tablet fragment from a copy of the Treaty of Kadesh has been found at the Hattusa site in Türkiye's Çorum province, the culture and tourism minister announced on September 21. About a year of study confirmed it as part of the 13th-century BC accord regarded as the world's earliest known written peace treaty.
source: Hürriyet Daily NewsTwelve giraffes moved from neighbouring Namibia were released into Bicuar National Park in southwest Angola on July 30. They are the first giraffes there in about 25 years, in a joint effort by Angola's protected-areas agency and the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, and are reported to be settling in well.
source: MongabayInnlandet County Council's glacial archaeology team recovered 48 prehistoric arrows from ice patches in Jotunheimen during a three-week expedition this summer. The oldest, a slate-tipped arrow with a wooden shaft, dates back 5,000 to 6,000 years to the Stone Age.
source: Secrets of the Ice (Innlandet County Glacier Archaeology Program)Olive ridley sea turtles laid eggs near Seal Beach on September 16 and at Huntington Beach on September 19 in California. According to NOAA, it is the first natural sea turtle nesting ever recorded on the West Coast, and both sites have been fenced off for protection.
source: OPB (Associated Press)A museum devoted to the film 'The Sound of Music' opened on September 20 at Hellbrunn Palace in Salzburg. Located next to the film's famous gazebo, it occupies a restored group of historic buildings at the park entrance and is run by the Salzburg Museum.
source: Tourismus SalzburgThe disused airport site is becoming Ellinikon Park, about 400 acres of green with 30,000 trees and 3 million plants that keep it roughly 4°C cooler than the surrounding streets. It is due to open next year.
source: Good News NetworkWith Timor-Leste certified trachoma-free by the WHO, every country in the region has now eliminated the disease, sparing more than two billion people from a poverty-linked cause of blindness.
source: Good News NetworkWoolston Eyes, once a dump for canal dredgings, was restored by a local conservation group from 2021. By 2025, 35 pairs of the rare grebe were nesting there.
source: Good News NetworkResearchers from Hunter College tested Asian elephants at Thailand's National Elephant Institute with fruit in clear boxes. The elephants resisted grabbing straight at it and used a side opening they had learned instead.
source: Good News NetworkLaura O'Brien, a 24-year-old park ranger watering flowers, had a famously shy kingfisher land on her glove and stay for ten minutes. She said she felt like Snow White.
source: Good News NetworkEngland has launched a £442 million programme built on Housing First, which gives people a permanent home before asking them to tackle other problems. Pilots helped over 1,000 people, with 92% still housed after 12 months and loneliness falling from 35% to 16%.
source: Positive NewsA tenth-anniversary exhibition of the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards opened in London on 12 September, showing 91 winning images across seven habitats with spatial sound, using humour to draw people to nature and conservation.
source: Positive NewsA five-year study of more than 3,400 London schoolchildren found lung growth about 10ml a year greater after the 2019 ultra-low emission zone, closing the gap with a comparison city. Researchers said they were stunned by how fast it happened.
source: Positive NewsRingo, designed by three Hongik University students, is a yacht-shaped IV stand for children with a seat, four wheels and a groove that keeps tubes untangled, so a walk down the ward feels like steering your own boat.
source: IDEAS FOR GOOD