You never hear good news. Let's change that (no. 164)
16 good things that happened this week :)
Hey fam,
I recently took a few weeks completely off, for the first time in years, to explore several conservancies in Kenya with my family. We took thousands of photos, and while the gallery feature on here is limited to just nine… here’s a quick little recap!
I was expecting to see all sorts of amazing species, but I was completely blown away by the quantity of wildlife we saw. Pulling up to the watering hole and seeing 75 elephants might be the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. You kinda expect there to be one or two over here, and a group of five over there, but conservancies are preserving a glimpse of what the wild world used to look like (and can look again in the future?).
I was reminded once again how beautiful our planet is, how lucky we are to share it with so many amazing creatures, and how important protecting them is. I feel more motivated than ever to continue this work, and I’m so glad you’re here with me!
Enjoy the good stories I found this week, and share yours with us so we can celebrate your wins, big or small…
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Tuesday, September 2nd
🏞️ A new national park may be coming to Florida which would be the 64th in the US if the bill gets passed, and would essentially combine over 40 existing state parks and forests into a unified national park for greater protection of the area’s unique natural springs (Mark Harper|Daytona Beach News-Journal)
🤖 Advanced robots are picking apart electronic waste to give the precious metals and rare-earth magnets inside a second life as a new product, which can help meet our growing demand for these materials without needing more mining (The Economist)
📸 240 photographers came together to release stunning limited edition prints that raise money to protect the natural world in an initiative called Prints for Wildlife available just for the next few weeks which has raised over $2.1 million for conservation and communities since 2020 (Prints for Wildlife)
🧵 Community win: unabellavitaaprons is turning fabric destined for the landfill into aprons for artists.
John, the talented self-taught gardener
A 76-year-old man taught himself how to garden so well that $675,000 was raised for charity just by people coming to look at it…!
In 1998, John Massey started with a patch of grass and began to plant over 20,000 flowers, trees, and shrubs around his property in England.
With inspiration from his grandfather, advice from a Norwegian Princess, and motivation from the Duke of Edinburgh saying businesses should give back to the local community, he built a beautiful garden from the ground up without any formal training.
And 27 years later, it now employs 70 people and opens to the public each weekend with the small entry fee getting donated to a rotating charity of the year.
But taking this impressive hobby even further, the garden and nursery are set aside in a trust to become an educational charity once his time is up, and in the meantime they’re training a new student each year to keep the craft going.
In John’s words, “When people come to the garden, they always say they feel an instant sense of peace and relaxation. Plants don't just feed the body but the mind too.”
Thursday, September 4
🦬 An unexpected baby bison was born marking the first calf in the White Earth Nation’s program to restore bison populations to Indigenous lands in Minnesota, which is both historic and surprising as they weren’t expecting any births until next year (Chandra Colvin|MPR)
🌳 A flowering tree was extinct in the wild and kept alive only in a Sri Lankan botanical garden until a Facebook post claimed there was a 50-foot Pini-Beraliya in a small village, so a botanist checked it out, confirmed it was real, overturned its status, and teams planted saplings near the wild populations to help it recover (Malak Rodrigo|Mongabay)
🌞 New data shows that Africa’s having a surge in solar panel imports with 20 countries setting new records over the past 12 months, marking a 60% increase, and hinting at a pivotal moment where solar energy takes off across the continent (Ember)
^ which again comes at a great time as we’re about two weeks away from the Sun Day of action where public events will take place around the world to celebrate our sun. (I’m a Sun Day Partner, and I’ll see you at an NYC event!)
📚 Community win: saxen8 started a library at their workplace so everyone can bring in, read, and swap books.
What else?
💦 Mr Beast & Mark Rober’s #TeamWater campaign raised $41.5+ million to supply decades of. clean water to 2 million people.
📸 The best photos you’ll see today, courtesy of the Ocean Photographer of the Year finalists.
💉 Scientists made “skin in a syringe” that can be 3D printed to help treat burns.
❤️🩹 Inventions from these scientists saved an unbelievable number of lives.
🍎 Volunteers are picking unwanted fruit from people’s trees to give to those in need.
This newsletter was written by Jacob Simon. Over 1 million people are in our community across Instagram, TikTok, Threads, YouTube, and Bluesky. You can say hi on LinkedIn, or by emailing jacob@jacobsimonsays.com. Main illustration by Andrea Miralles. See you next week for more!
I really appreciate the happy news you print! And your "safari" looked amazing :)