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10. Some Species Are Returning from the Brink of Extinction
Conservation efforts pay off, and that’s what the Conservation Optimism Summit celebrates every year.
That’s where we learned more than a few species have come back from the brink of extinction. Check out the list of good things to celebrate this year:
- The Reef Manta Ray on South America’s coast
- The Giant Panda in China
- The Large Blue Butterfly in Northern Europe
- The Arabian Oryx in Egypt and Saudi Arabia
- The Tasmanian Devil in—where else?—Tasmania
- The Echo Parakeet on Reunion and Mauritus Islands
One of the largest misconceptions in wildlife conservation is the view that it doesn’t help, or that people can’t do anything in their everyday lives. These efforts do pay off, and we can see it happening every year.
Source: The Guardian
9. Plastic Waste Might Have a Better Solution
While keeping her beehives, scientist Federica Bertocchini noticed that wax worms had eaten their way out of a plastic bag.
Why is that a big deal? Plastics can stick around for decades before beginning to break down, and that hurts the environment. We have mountains of plastic waste stored around the world, and we don’t have a great long-term solution for them.
But these worms might have just shown us a way to break down plastics centuries ahead of time.
The worms can eat right through a plastic bag in a matter of hours.
Scientists are now working in labs to recreate the digestive process the wax worm uses. It’s a promising solution straight out of nature.
Source: The Atlantic
8. We Can Turn Seawater into Drinking Water
