Uplifting News

A book-loving five-year-old has brought joy to care home residents by reading his favourite stories to them.

Harri, five, spends his free time after school reading to residents in Pendine Park's Highfield care home in Wrexham.

His mum Laura said it was his love of reading that inspired her to bring the book fanatic to the care home where she works.

Harri has become a firm favourite among residents and his mum said their faces "light up" when he arrives.

Laura, a senior care practitioner at Highfield, added: "Staff also have got to know him well and always shout out 'hello Harri' on his arrival.

"They all know him and enjoy hearing how well he is progressing with his reading."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/11021462

Insect populations flourish in the restored habitats of solar energy facilities

Bumblebees buzz from flower to flower, stopping for a moment under a clear blue Minnesota sky. Birds chirp, and tall grasses blow in the breeze. This isn't a scene from a pristine nature preserve or national park. It is nestled between photovoltaic (PV) solar arrays on rehabilitated farmland.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and National Renewable Energy Laboratory wanted to understand the ecological value of PV solar energy sites planted with native grasses and wildflowers. They examined how vegetation would establish and how insect communities would respond to the newly established habitat. The five-year field study published in Environmental Research Letters looked at two solar sites in southern Minnesota operated by Enel Green Power North America. Both sites were built on retired agricultural land.

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"This research highlights the relatively rapid insect community responses to habitat restoration at solar energy sites," said Lee Walston, an Argonne landscape ecologist and environmental scientist who was lead author of the study. "It demonstrates, if properly sited, habitat-friendly solar energy can be a feasible way to safeguard insect populations and can improve the pollination services in adjacent agricultural fields." Walston also serves as head of the Ecology, Natural Resources, and Managed Systems department in Argonne's Environmental Science division.

This is pretty badass

The largest dam removal in U.S. history entered a critical phase this week, with the lowering of dammed reservoirs on the Klamath River.

On Thursday, the gate on a 16-foot-wide bypass tunnel at the base of Iron Gate dam, the lowest of those slated to be removed, was opened from a crack to 36 inches.

Amy Cordalis stood in the dawn chill to witness the first big surge as the gate was widened. She's an attorney and Yurok Tribe member who has played a critical role in advocating for dam removal. As water poured through the tunnel, she could hear boulders rolling and tumbling. The water turned to dark chocolate milk as decades of pent-up sediment surged through.

"This is historic and life-changing," Cordalis said. "And it means that the Yurok people have a future. It means the river has a future; the salmon have a future."

Sorry, for some reason Jerboa didn't add the url...

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240111-the-us-is-bringing-back-beavers-because-theyre-natures-best-firefighters

The US is bringing back nature's best firefighters: beavers

Summary

Germany's renewable energy share reached a record 55% in 2023, driven by capacity expansion and favorable weather. This significant jump brings the country closer to its ambitious 2030 target of 80% green energy. Offshore wind led the way, followed by solar and biomass. The government's simplification of approval processes is credited with boosting growth. Power demand decreased due to economic slowdown and prioritizing renewables over fossil fuels. Despite temporary price spikes in 2022, day-ahead power prices stabilized in 2023, reflecting the increasing role of renewables. Overall, these developments highlight Germany's progress and the challenges it faces in its transition to a sustainable energy future.

Summary

• First cub sighting in 10 years: Camera captures a mother tiger with two cubs in Thailand, a major boost for the species.
• Population boom: Tiger numbers skyrocket, from 46 in 2007 to potentially 190 now, making Thailand the only Southeast Asian country with significant growth.
• Conservation works: Thailand's efforts, like anti-poaching measures and reduced human activity, are paying off. The country can now even become a source of tigers for struggling neighbours.
• Hope for the future: With a thriving population and suitable habitat, tigers seem set to flourish in Thailand's western rainforests.

Comments

However good this is, I personally wouldn't want to run into one of these in the wild.

Frances Harper had never used a video camera before. But at the age of 60, lying in the bath, she heard a story that changed her life

One morning in 2007, Frances Harper was taking a bath and listening to the local news on BBC Radio Suffolk when one story caught her attention. A young woman, Louise, was being interviewed about her life as a sex worker in Ipswich. “I couldn’t see how this interview was helping her situation at all,” says Harper, who was 60 at the time. “I got out of the bath and made some notes. I realised she needed a documentary to tell her story properly and I thought perhaps I could try to make it.”

Harper had never owned a video camera and had no idea how to shoot a film. She had spent the past four decades working in secretarial jobs, as well as raising her son and supporting her husband in his construction business. “I was busy but something was always missing,” she says. “Something I could do for myself.”

Armed with a sudden sense of purpose and without a current job to keep her occupied, Harper rushed out to buy a basic camera, read the manual and began looking up ways to contact Louise. The police wouldn’t share her details, but after finding the name of her solicitor in the local paper, she left a letter with the firm to be passed on. “Soon after, Louise phoned me and we decided to meet in a cafe in Ipswich,” Harper says. “I told her I’d like to make a documentary to share her story and help her. She agreed, and that was my entry into an entirely new world.”

An unlikely citizen scientist is helping to save an endangered dolphin that lives in Pakistan's Indus River. He's a fisherman who cannot read or write.

Using his battered mobile, Sikander Ali calls a Pakistan representative of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature whenever he sees a river dolphin, which he says is happening more often.

"Seeing dolphins makes me happy," he beams. On a recent day, he proudly recounted how he spotted a baby dolphin beached on a river stone and helped save it.

Engaging fisherfolk as citizen scientists is just the latest effort conservationists are trying as they, against all odds, slowly revive the numbers of the Indus River dolphin. From roughly 150 dolphins counted in 1974, there are now nearly 2,000, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Transgender people looking to change up their wardrobes are often met with financial barriers. At a private college in Virginia, LGBTQ+ students are working to break down those walls with a no cost food and clothing pantry.

Dell Thrift and Pantry at the University of Lynchburg provides free clothing, including binders, for members of the community, as well as nonperishable food. While it is geared towards transgender and gender-nonconforming pupils, all students and staff are welcome, 24/7.

The pantry opened in September after receiving a grant of $1,600 in startup funds from the university's Innovation Collaborative program. It is manned by 20 volunteer students, and accepts clothing donations from its patrons, as well as monthly food donations from the Park View Community Mission and the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank.

Dell Thrift and Pantry also features a fund specifically for binders, which can be requested through a QR code on the bulletin board outside the shop. Patrons can fill in their information and receive one in their mail, delivered discretely.

Quality binders are often expensive, and using cheap ones can have adverse health effects. The binders provided by Dell Thrift come from GC2b, which are not only designed with safety in mind, but also created "by trans people, for trans people," according to their website.

read more: https://www.advocate.com/news/transgender-nonbinary-thrift-fashion-virginia

Some say they were first brought in to take out the rats. Others contend they wandered in on their own.

What everyone can agree on — including those who have lived or worked at Chile’s largest prison the longest — is that the cats were here first.

Known simply as “the Pen,” the 180-year-old main penitentiary in Santiago, Chile’s capital, has long been known as a place where men live in cages and cats roam free. What is now more clearly understood is the positive effect of the prison’s roughly 300 cats on the 5,600 human residents.

The felines’ presence “has changed the inmates’ mood, has regulated their behavior and has strengthened their sense of responsibility with their duties, especially caring for animals,” said the prison’s warden, Col. Helen Leal González, who has two cats of her own at home, Reina and Dante, and a collection of cat figurines on her desk.

Prisoners informally adopt the cats, work together to care for them, share their food and beds and, in some cases, have built them little houses. In return, the cats provide something invaluable in a lockup notorious for overcrowding and squalid conditions: love, affection and acceptance.

“Sometimes you’ll be depressed and it’s like she senses that you’re a bit down,” said Reinaldo Rodriguez, 48, who is scheduled to be imprisoned until 2031 on a firearms conviction. “She comes and glues herself to you. She’ll touch her face to yours.”

Formal programs to connect prisoners and animals became more common in the late 1970s, and after consistently positive results, they have expanded across the world, including to Japan, the Netherlands and Brazil.

They have become particularly popular in the United States. In Arizona, prisoners train wild horses to patrol the U.S. border with Mexico. In Minnesota and Michigan, prisoners train dogs for the blind and deaf. And in Massachusetts, prisoners help care for wounded or sick wildlife, like hawks, coyotes and raccoons.

Connecting inmates and dogs has repeatedly been shown to lead to “a decrease in recidivism, improved empathy, improved social skills and a safer and more positive relationship between inmates and prison officials,” said Beatriz Villafaina-Domínguez, a researcher in Spain who reviewed 20 separate studies of such programs.

Dogs have been the most common animal used by prisons, followed by horses, and in most programs, animals are brought to the inmates, or vice versa. In Chile, however, the inmates developed an organic connection to the stray cats who live alongside them.

Yet there was a time when the relationship was not so positive. A decade ago, the cat population was expanding uncontrolled and many cats were getting sick, including developing a contagious infection that left some cats blind. The situation “even stressed out the inmates themselves,” said Carla Contreras Sandoval, a prison social worker with two cat tattoos.

So in 2016, prison officials finally allowed volunteers to come care for the cats. A Chilean organization called the Felinnos Foundation has since worked with Humane Society International to systematically collect all of the cats to treat, spay and neuter them. They have now reached nearly every one.

Like the inmates, the cats’ living conditions vary by section of the prison. During a recess period in one of the most crowded areas, where 250 prisoners share 26 cells, prisoners packed a narrow passageway, with clothes drying overhead and cats darting between their feet.

Eduardo Campos Torreblanca, who is serving three years for aggravated robbery, said each cell cared for at least one cat, but his kitten had recently died. “He was tiny, a baby,” he said. “And someone stepped on him.”

When the volunteers first arrived in 2016, they counted nearly 400 cats, a figure that left out newborn kittens and a large cat colony that mostly stuck to the roof. Now that number has been steadily declining. Why? Consider Mr. Nuñez, the home-burglary convict with two years left on his sentence. When he is freed, what would happen to his cat, Ugly? That was easy, he said. “She’s coming with me.”