Accessible Nature Trails

0:01 Hi there, I'm Johnny Mac with five good news stories. In 1987, there were only three Spix macaws left in the wild. By 2000, there were none. The last known wild bird, a male, disappeared from his patch of scrubland in northeastern Brazil. And that was it. And the species only existed in captivity and some scattered breeding programs around the world. Only 90 birds in total. And the general scientific consensus was that the wild population was gone. Well, good news. Last month, researchers confirmed the presence of wild Spix macaws in Brazil for the first time in 24 years. These weren't escaped birds. DNA analysis and behavioral observation confirmed they were reproducing in the area and they were nest sites and chicks. And what appeared to be an extinction event in the wild has been partially walked back. That is great. The recovery effort involved the Brazilian government, a German breeding center called the Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parents, and years of carefully reintroducing captive bred birds into their stored habitat. The Spix Macaw is vivid blue.

1:07 It's so saturated that it reads almost electric in photographs. It is the bird that inspired the animated film Rio. Martha grew up near the Niger Delta. She watched the mangrove forests around her community disappear over the course of her lifetime. They were cut for charcoal and timber and damaged by oil spills, and the fish that had sustained her community for generations became harder to find. So she started planting. She started working with a group of women from coastal communities in Rivers State, training them in mangrove propagation, how to collect seedlings, nurture them in nurseries, then transplant them at the water's edge during the right tidal windows. The group has now replanted more than 40 hectares of mangrove forest along the Niger Delta coast. Fish populations in the restored areas have begun to recover. Juvenile sea life, including crabs, shrimp, and small fish, use the root systems as nurseries, hiding and growing in the tangle before moving to open water. We'll stay with the conservation today in Cambodia, in the Mekong River. There's a population of dolphins that has been watched for a long time. At their lowest point, estimates put their total number at fewer than 80. The Irwadi dolphin is a compact pale gray animal with a rounded forehead and no beak. It's not built for speed.

2:13 It's built for rivers. Researchers monitoring the Cambodian stretch of the river have confirmed six new calves born this year, bringing the estimated total population to 118. The recovery has been credited to a ban on gillnit fishing in core dolphin habitat and some dolphin sanctuary zones established with support from the World Wildlife Fund. That's given the animals some space where human activity is limited enough that the dolphins can calve and raise their young. Nice job by Sloan. She lives in the Phoenix area. She's 12 years old. And earlier this year, she learned that diapers cannot be purchased with SNAP benefits. That's the Federal Food Assistance Program. And that diaper banks in Arizona were struggling to keep up with demand from families who couldn't afford them any other way. Sloan organized a diaper drive. She reached out to the school. She recruited friends. She wanted a goal of 5,000 diapers. She got... 52,925, to be specific. The diapers went to Phoenix-area nonprofit SEAZ, which distributed them to families in need. The organization said it was one of the largest single donations they had ever received from an individual donor. Sloan is in seventh grade. In Wisconsin, you'll find the Hidden Valley Trail. It's 450 feet long, wide enough for a wheelchair, surfaced with packed gravel, and lined along one side with a wooden guide rail studded with Braille signs describing exactly what you're next to. The species of trees, the sounds you'll hear, the elevation, the history.

3:36 It's one of a small but growing number of accessible nature trails in the U.S. designed from the outset for visitors who are blind or visually impaired. The Braille panels are placed at the exact point where you are and describe what is there. For example, the fern is there to your left, which is where the sign says it would be. One woman was a visitor in her 60s. She'd been blind since her 40s. She told the Wisconsin State Journal she hadn't walked in the woods without holding someone's arm since before she lost her sight. She walked the Hidden Valley Trail alone. And those are your five good news stories for today. Have a great day.