In New Zealand, a fat, flightless, moss-green parrot that cannot fly and smells faintly of flowers just hit a number nobody has seen in roughly 75 years: 325 living individuals. The kakapo, one of the planet’s most improbable birds, came within a whisker of vanishing forever, and October’s wave of good news begins right there, with a species that refused to disappear. For anyone feeling overwhelmed by the volume of bad news cycling through every feed, what follows is a reminder that an enormous amount of repair work is happening quietly, in harbors and prairies and classrooms, whether or not it makes the headlines. Sam Bentley, whose monthly good-news roundups have built a growing audience of self-described advocates for the good in the world, brought together a set of stories this October that span seven countries and touch almost every dimension of the planet’s recovery.
A parrot, a prairie, and a harbor full of concrete
The kakapo story is genuinely staggering when the numbers are placed side by side. In 1995, just 51 birds remained, and only 20 of those were female. This year’s breeding season added a record 90 chicks to the population, taking the species past 300 for the first time in roughly 75 years. To put that pace into perspective, it took the recovery program 16 years in its early days to match what a single season just produced. The comeback has been led by New Zealand’s Department of Conservation alongside Ngai Tahu, a Maori tribe from the South Island.
On the other side of the world, in Bristol, Bentley helped Planet Wild install a floating wetland inside a harbor that has been lined with gray concrete for decades. The modular platform is made from old drinking water pipes wrapped in coconut husk, with more than 20 native species growing in floating clay pellets rather than soil. Above the water, the plants feed pollinators and give birds somewhere to nest; below, their roots shelter fish and pull pollution out of the water. A second, smaller platform came fitted with tiny ramps for baby seagulls that kept getting stranded in one corner of the harbor. Moments after it went in, a stranded chick climbed the ramp and onto the platform on its own.
In South Dakota, more than 1,100 buffalo now roam the Wolakota Buffalo Range on the Rosebud Reservation, covering 28,000 acres, one of the largest tribal-owned and managed herds in North America. Buffalo once numbered in the tens of millions across the Great Plains before being slaughtered in the 1800s, partly as a deliberate strategy to force Plains nations off their land. As WWF tribal liaison Monica Rattling Hawk described it, Lakota prophecies say that when the bison return strong, so will the strength of her people.
Solar panels that are also bee habitats, and a pushchair that changes everything
Solar power has dropped from around six dollars per watt in 2000 to closer to 12 cents today, and that price collapse is only part of the story. At two solar farms in Minnesota, researchers planted native grasses and wildflowers among the panels and followed the sites for five years. Native bee numbers in the areas they studied rose more than 20 times, with bees also visiting soybean flowers in neighboring fields.
A UK charity called Designability created what may be the world’s first pushchair designed for parents who use a wheelchair. The device replaces the back wheels and brakes of an ordinary pushchair so it can attach directly to a wheelchair, letting a parent steer, brake, and push while wheeling themselves. It has passed full safety testing with help from the pushchair company Mamas and Papas, and has already been tried by families across the UK. It is currently the most requested product in the charity’s 50-year history.
On the materials side, Sam’s producer Anna visited Material Matters in London and came back with three standouts: The Or Foundation in Ghana turning unsellable clothing from Kantamanto market into yarn and acoustic panels; a studio from University College London growing wall panels from mushroom roots with nesting spaces for bees and birds built in; and a studio called The New Materialist pressing invasive plants into solid boards for furniture and turning leftover sunflower plants into a natural glue.
Finally, Iceland announced plans to introduce a bill that could permanently ban commercial whaling, and more than 100 countries have now ratified the high seas treaty, the world’s first law to protect ocean life beyond any nation’s borders, which covers nearly half of the planet.
The 16-year-old who started teaching climate class over Zoom
In 2021, Ava Langridge started running climate classes over Zoom for young people tired of waiting for school to catch up. Only about half of the world’s school curricula even mentions climate change. That small online group became Our Youth for the Climate, now a team of over 50 running in-person workshops in countries including Fiji, Indonesia, and Nigeria. Langridge put it directly: ‘Students aren’t feeling overwhelmed with the information, but rather empowered to take action.’
The 90-minute workshops cover the linear economy versus the circular economy, the life cycle of a t-shirt, and always close with concrete actions. The next goal, Langridge said, is scale: an entire generation.
Back in Bristol, the floating wetland platform sits in the harbor. The ramps are in place. There is room for up to 5,000 square meters of wetland along that stretch of water, and the first chick has already found its way up.
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