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NATURE • Sunny Skyz
A goofy little pup wandered into the wrong cactus. He's healing now.A coyote pup believed to be four to six weeks old is recovering at the Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, after being found covered head to tail in hundreds of Cholla cactus spines. Staff called it one of the worst cactus encounters they had seen. The pup was discovered in Surprise, Arizona, and when the call came in, veterinary technician Berkeley Martineau knew it would be a long day. "He had spines just about everywhere," Martineau said. "There were spines in the nose, mouth, tongue, tail, and back; it was everywhere." Some had gone through an ear. Rescuers sedated the pup lightly and pulled the spines out one by one, a procedure that lasted more than two hours. A week later, the coyote is eating well and starting to socialize with other orphaned pups. Martineau has a theory about how it happened. "It was probably a goofy little coyote who stumbled into the wrong cactus."
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NATURE • Good News Network
A condor flew into Oregon, the first since 1904A California condor flew into Oregon last month, the first of its kind recorded in the state since 1904. Conservationists with northern California's Yurok Tribe identified the bird as B9, a female born in captivity and released into the wild in 2022. She covered 380 miles in four days, looping from the redwoods past Redding, into Oregon near Medford and Brookings, then back home to Redwoods National Park. "She flew almost 100 miles per day," said Tiana Williams Claussen, director of the Yurok Tribe Wildlife Department, "which means she was really utilizing the landscape the way that only a condor can." The species nearly vanished. By 1987 only 22 wild birds remained, all captured for a breeding program. In February, a Redwoods condor laid an egg in a hollow tree, the first there in over a century. It did not hatch. Williams Claussen called it a milestone anyway, noting that naive parents are still figuring it out.
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NATURE • Good Good Good
A 16-month-old Lab is saving turtles one nose-down search at a timeApril, a 16-month-old Labrador, can find an Eastern box turtle the size of a fist in miles of Long Island woods, which is a skill most humans will never need and most dogs would happily trade for a sandwich. She is a conservation detection dog, trained to sniff out the endangered turtles so researchers can track and protect a species in decline across New York. Box turtles are slow to mature and easy to miss, tucked under leaves and brush where a person could walk past a hundred of them. April does not walk past. She works the woods nose-down, then sits when she finds one, waiting for her handler to catch up. The turtles, for their part, do not appear especially grateful. They are turtles. They pull in and wait it out. April finds the next one anyway.
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PROGRESS • Good News Network
After decades of loss, the mangroves came backThe world has more mangrove forest now than it did at the turn of the century, according to a study published in Science by a team from Tulane University. After decades of decline, with nearly 1,120 square miles lost between the 1980s and 2010, gains have outpaced losses over the past 16 years. By 2023, the net loss across four decades had shrunk to about 1%, far less than earlier estimates suggested. The forests are also getting older and denser, the kind of closed-canopy growth that stores more carbon and blunts storm surges. Lead author Dr. Zhen Zhang pointed to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, when Indonesian islands still covered in mangroves came through largely protected. "That increased public awareness about the importance of protecting mangroves," he told the BBC. Few people hike through a mangrove. It takes a real nature lover to endure the mud and the bugs. The forests grew back anyway.
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DELIGHT • Upworthy
A new dad reviewed his newborn. She got 4.75 stars.A new father named Jordan, who posts as @CamOnAll on TikTok, reviewed his newborn daughter the way he might review a kitchen gadget, and the video has passed 8 million views. Holding Louise, who they call Lou, in a semi-football hold, he reports that the product arrived roughly five and a half weeks ago in slightly different packaging than expected. Lou came via an unexpected but non-emergency c-section, which he describes as some manual opening of the box. He notes a healthy shipping weight of six pounds, 14 ounces, then docks half a star. "The big thing about this one is this one came with the gassy mode activated," he says. The lip tie and tongue tie he never ordered have since been fixed. In a follow-up video at three months, he upgrades her to 4.75 stars, then admits she is definitely a five. She is gaining weight, still spitting up, and, by his account, getting chunky.
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With love, The Editor
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