As many parts of the world went into lockdown in 2020, incredible photographs emerged of nature bouncing back after decades of decline, much of it linked to human activity and climate change. In the longer-term, projects such as rewilding, reforestation and conservation have added hope for some of the world's most delicate and beautiful ecosystems. From Nepalese tigers to Caribbean corals, we highlight some of the animals and habitats that have recovered in recent years...

While alarming rates of deforestation make headlines in most parts of the world, South Korea is a rare success story: it’s managed to increase its tree cover significantly over the past 50 years. But it hasn’t happened by accident. At the end of the Korean War in 1953, the country had lost almost all of its forests due to logging and other industrial activities during the country’s Japanese occupation. In 1967, the Korea Forest Service was established by the government and strict policies on illegal logging were introduced.

An extensive reforestation programme was kickstarted in 1973, which included encouraging ordinary people to plant trees in an annual “growing period” each spring. Several successive reforestation initiatives have allowed South Korea to become greener and greener by the decade. The numbers speak for themselves: forest cover has almost doubled since the mid-1950s and today, 64% of the land is forest. The increase in trees has also improved food security and benefitted South Korea’s economy, making the country the poster child for reforestation. 

Hawaii is one of the most ecologically diverse parts of the US – despite making up less than 1% of the nation’s land area, it accounts for more than 30% of all species listed as threatened or endangered by the Endangered Species Act (ESA). One of those species is the palila, a yellow-crowned songbird that lives on the slopes of the Mauna Kea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island. Yet ever since human settlers first arrived in Hawaii some 1,600 years ago, palila numbers have been diminishing. In the 1800s, the arrival of European colonists brought in new diseases, transmitted through mosquitoes, which worsened the birds’ fate. 

The palila began to be protected under the ESA in 1966. However, there wasn’t much in the way of real action taken to safeguard them until 1978, when a lawsuit from the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund led the ESA to set aside $14.6 million (£10.5m) for palila restoration projects. These included increasing the cover of māmane trees – palila exclusively eat seeds, flowers and insects found on them –  as well as breeding the birds in captivity and relocating them.  Although progress has been gradual, the programme has been successful in preventing extinction and further reforestation is set to help safeguard their future.

Rewilding is a hot topic in the UK, where native woodlands cover just 2.5% of the land, having been cleared over the centuries for agriculture and industry. Carrifran Wildwood, a 1,600-acre valley in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, has emerged as a conservation success story recently. The plot was bought by the Borders Forest Trust in 2000, who initiated the Carrifran Wildwood Project to restore the forest’s biodiversity.

These are the world's most beautiful forests

Since woodland restoration began, more than half a million saplings have been planted. The intention is to return the landscape to its state some 6,000 years ago, and the planted trees will increase biodiversity, creating a habitat for various bird, plant and animal species. Although work is ongoing, the project has had early successes in creating young woodland in the lower part of the valley.

Native to Africa and Asia, pangolins are the only mammals in the world covered in scales. Pangolins’ meat is considered a delicacy and their scales are used in ancient Chinese medicine. As a result the species is under threat. In recognition of this in June 2020 pangolins’ protection was upgraded to the highest level by the Chinese government and they were removed from an official list of species that can be used for medicinal treatment. 

Love this? Follow our Facebook page for more travel inspiration

Conservation groups have welcomed the move. Pangolins are thought to be one of the most trafficked mammals on the planet, and with trafficking linked to the spread of diseases between animals and humans, it’s a good time to clamp down. Moreover, there’s no concrete evidence for pangolin scales’ efficacy in medicine, with World Animal Protection stating that they can be replaced by synthetic products. It’s hoped that increased protection will take pangolins back from the brink of extinction and prevent pictures like this, featuring seized pangolin scales piled high by customs authorities in Hong Kong.

Throughout the 20th century, forests in sub-Saharan Africa had been disappearing at an alarming rate, which was largely linked to the use of wood for cooking fuel. In the Kwimba region, located in northern Tanzania, a coalition was formed between government and international organisations to attempt to reforest the area. Beginning in 1990, the Kwimba Reforestation Project focused on creating community plant nurseries, making cooking equipment more efficient so that less wood would be needed, and giving people responsibility for saplings through tree ownership certificates.

The project lasted for nine years and saw an impressive 6.4 million trees being planted in total. Elsewhere in Tanzania, the Bunduki Gap project has been successful in increasing forest cover in an important ecological region in the Uluguru Mountains, which had previously been completely razed. Since the project began in 2009, the World Land Trust reported in 2017 that it had been a success, with trustee Kevin Cox describing the region as “fully cloaked in forest”.

Sadly, coral bleaching – where warming sea temperatures and acidification make coral lose their famous vibrant colours – is becoming a widespread phenomenon all over the world. Yet corals in the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea are bucking the trend. Even though these waters are warming at a faster rate than the global average, there have not been any mass bleaching events.

Researchers have begun to study the corals to figure out just how resilient they are. It turns out, very: while most regular corals would be bleached after just a 1-2°C (1.8-3.6°F) increase on summer ocean temperatures, these ones were found to be able to withstand up to 4-5°C (7.2-9°F) temperature increase. In fact, in some cases, they actually thrived in warmer water. Marine biologists are beginning to view the Red Sea as one of the few coral reefs that will be able to survive climate change. They’re calling for it to be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site so that it can be protected for research and conservation. 

It’s safe to say that the world has woken up to the massive problem of plastic in our oceans in recent years. Yet it’s a bigger issue than many people realise. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and California, lies the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which is thought to be around 617,763 square miles (1.6 millionsq km) in area – twice the size of Texas. In an effort to reduce this plastic island, a non-profit called the Ocean Cleanup has created an innovative cleaning device. 

Using a 1,969-foot (600m) long floating barrier, the organisation has been sweeping up waste and taking it to shore. However, in April 2023, scientists found thriving communities of coastal creatures such as anemones and crabs that have made the floating plastic their home. As many as 484 marine invertebrate organisms were identified, accounting for 46 different species, when 105 pieces of debris were fished out and examined. Ocean Cleanup, meanwhile, knows a bigger problem remains. It will continue its project and aims to remove 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040.

Once abundant in the oceans off the coast of South Georgia, more than 40,000 blue whales were killed during the 20th century due to industrial whaling. In fact, the species was pretty much considered extinct. However, in November 2020, research by the British Antarctic Survey found that the species had returned to the area, revealing that blue whales are finally recovering after a ban on commercial whaling in the 1980s.

The survey reported 58 whale sightings as well as numerous underwater sound recordings. This comes after only one blue whale was spotted in the region in the entire period between 1998 and 2018. It’s unclear why they took so long to return, although Dr. Jenifer Jackson, the whale ecologist who led the expedition, described it as “an exciting discovery and a really positive step forward for conservation of the Antarctic blue whale”.

Once covered by lush forest, Mexico’s Mixteca region began to be rapidly deforested after the arrival of Spanish colonists in the 16th century. A centuries-long process of desertification began after settlers chopped down trees to build missions and allowed goats to graze in the area, further worsening soil quality. Then, in the 1980s, the arrival of Guatemalan immigrants shaped Mixteca’s fate for the better.

Having fled civil war, the refugees settled in Mixteca and were alarmed by the desertification they discovered there. So local farmer Jesús León Santos founded the Center for Integral Small Farmer Development in the Mixteca (CEDICAM), which created a community-led operation to reforest the area. The group took on techniques recommended by the Guatemalan settlers, including reintroducing native tree species, planting crops in rows for higher yields and using ditches to prevent the erosion of hillsides. More than 2,471 acres (1,000 hectares) of land have been reforested with more than one million trees, earning Santos and the CEDICAM the Goldman Environmental Prize for their work in 2008.

The Appalachian region of the eastern US has suffered dramatic deforestation due to mining. Coal mines began to spring up at the turn of the 20th century and since that time, techniques have become more and more destructive. Beginning in the 1990s, mountaintop removal, which essentially involves exploding hilltops to access coal, has been used to mine the fossil fuel more quickly. In 2021, the EPA estimated that 1.4 million acres (566,559 hectares) of Appalachian forest had been destroyed.

Established in 2004, the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative (ARRI) began to restore forests in the region. Among its main goals were planting more native hardwood trees, improving trees’ survival rates and quickly creating a new forest habitat. In 2015, the US Department of Agriculture reported that around 95 million trees had been replanted on 140,000 acres (56,655 hectares) of former mining land. 

Once a fundamental part of the British countryside, beavers were pushed towards extinction some 400 years ago by hunting. In 2020, following a five-year long, government-backed reintroduction trial, beavers were successfully brought back into the River Otter in east Devon. As of August 2020, up to 15 families of beavers were estimated to be living there.

Their return could have wide-reaching benefits for the overall ecosystem. These creatures create the dams they’re best known for by gnawing down trees, which collect up debris and slow water flow – it’s thought that this could help to reduce flooding problems further downstream. What’s more, they have helped bring back native plants to the area and their burrows have created habitats for other wildlife.

Offering fresh hope for coral reefs all over the world, in Belize, decisive actions have been taken to protect the 700-mile (1,127km) long MesoAmerican Reef. Back in 2009, the reef system was placed on the UNESCO “danger list”, highlighting a need for imminent conservation. And the government listened. It has issued firm restrictions on fishing, which include expanding the size of its “no-take” areas where fishing is banned, and created a moratorium against drilling for oil on the reef.

The moratorium has arguably been the most significant move. In 2012, environmental activists created a people’s referendum to find out whether locals were in favour of offshore drilling. The answer was a resounding no: out of 29,235 total participants, roughly 96% were against oil exploitation. The following year, many of the country’s oil contracts were declared invalid by the Belize Supreme Court and a few years later the country’s oil moratorium came into force, which put an end to all offshore oil drilling in its waters. In 2018, the reef was removed from UNESCO’s danger list. 

In the 1970s, Hawaiian green sea turtles were coveted for all the wrong reasons – their skin was turned into fashion accessories, their bones used for ornaments and their flesh considered a culinary delicacy. So in the 1970s, when marine biologist George Balazs carried out an inventory around the Hawaiian islands, there were just 67 nesting female turtles. Fearing that turtles wouldn’t survive at the rate they were being hunted, in 1978, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) classified the species as threatened, and made killing them a crime. 

Check out these lesser-known American islands

The conservation programme has been a resounding success. According to estimates by Balazs, there are now more than 400 nesting female turtles each year, which is an increase of more than 600% since the early 1970s. In the US, all sea turtle species are currently listed as endangered, which forbids any kind of human contact with them. 

Large crowds of people and speedboats had become an all-too-common sight at Thailand’s Maya Bay, in Mu Ko Phi Phi National Park, up until its closure in 2018. Some days there were as many as 6,000 people on the narrow, 250m (0.16-mile) long beach. But it wasn’t just the sheer number of visitors that was a problem. As much as half of the bay’s corals had been damaged by boats’ anchors and the coastline had become severely littered.

Luckily, the closure helped to restore this natural paradise to its former glory. Numbers of black-tipped sharks have increased from just six in 2018 to over 100 per year; new trees and plants have been introduced; and corals have begun to bounce back. In January 2023, Maya Bay reopened to visitors with improved tourism infrastructure to protect the natural environment.

Exciting findings from a new study suggest that forests can grow back faster than we thought. According to the research, conducted by a group of international scientists and published in the journal Science, tropical forests can almost completely regenerate in two decades without human interference. This is thanks to a biological process known as secondary succession, whereby old plants help new ones to grow.

The study could have wide-reaching implications for deforested areas, although researchers have cautioned that regrowth rates vary significantly across different parts of the world. They have suggested that in some regions, additional forest management techniques such as weeding and controlling invasive species will be needed to ensure forests can grow back. 

You’ve heard of whale noises, but did you know fish can also sing? At a coral reef in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, fish have been recorded making a series of grunts, whoops, purrs and growls – which scientists say is a sign that reef restoration is working. The reef here has been badly damaged by blast fishing, which relies on the use of explosives to kill or stun everything in an area, but in the past decade it’s undergone significant regrowth.

The restoration initiative, known as the Mars Coral Reef Restoration Project, involved attaching live pieces of coral to metal structures and putting them in the damaged area. According to researchers, the series of sounds recorded in this four-hectare patch more closely resembled those of undamaged reefs, suggesting that the ecosystem is returning to health. 

Three wild bison have been released from wildlife parks into Wilder Bean, a commercial pine forest near Canterbury, Kent. It’s hoped their natural behaviour will transform the dense space into a natural woodland, with their taste for bark opening up trails and more open ground.

The project, managed by Kent Wildlife Trust, means that new plants, lizards, birds, bats and insects could thrive here too. It’s the first time wild bison have roamed in Britain for thousands of years and more grazing animals are set to join them, including a bull, Exmoor ponies, iron age pigs and Longhorn cattle.

These endangered animals are on the verge of extinction

Voted the world's favourite animal in 2004, tigers have commanded more time and money from conservationists than perhaps any other species and they're well overdue some good news. In July 2022 Nepalese officials announced that thanks to conservation efforts the local tiger population had more than doubled since 2009, reaching 355 individuals, and numbers are continuing to grow.

Once common in jungles and grasslands throughout Asia, poaching and habitat loss saw tiger numbers plummet by 95% through the 20th century. Despite the increase in numbers of wild tigers, conservationists are warning not to over-celebrate this fragile success. Tigers are still marked as 'endangered' on the IUCN Red List and occupy only a small fraction of their former territory.

Scientists at the Florida Aquarium have scored a crucial victory in the race to revitalise the Caribbean's ailing coral reefs. A team of marine biologists successfully reproduced elkhorn coral in a laboratory environment for the first time, sparking hopes of a brighter future for one of the area's most important – and most threatened – coral species. Elkhorn is an anchor for Caribbean reef systems, as thickets of the coral provide habitats for other corals and fish, but a 97% population loss since the 1980s has left only 300 or so individuals in the wild.

The species is the 14th coral to be successfully spawned in the aquarium's Apollo Beach Lab, but it is by far the most significant. Named for its resemblance to a pair of antlers, the corals thrive in shallow water at the tops of reefs, sheltering the ecosystem below and helping break up big waves and storm surges above. Threatened by warming seas and decimated by disease, the fragile population could gain up to 100 healthy adults from this spawning alone.

In 1979, the large blue butterfly was declared extinct in the UK, and would remain so for four years until scientists reintroduced the species with a handful of caterpillars from Sweden. In 2022, the butterfly has notched its best summer in 150 years of record-keeping, thanks to targeted conservation work turning arable fields and downland into flower-rich meadows perfect for pollinating.

Still an endangered species across Europe, the large blue butterfly now flies in greater numbers in Somerset and Gloucestershire than anywhere else on Earth, with a third of its UK population found in 12 new sites carefully curated for its wellbeing. It's not the only bug to benefit with rugged oil beetles, spotted bee flies and magnificent Duke of Burgundy butterflies all finding solace in the new habitats.

With its strikingly blue waters and tiny islands, this patch of ocean is part of Indonesia's Raja Ampat, a four-million hectare protected area in the country's West Papau province. The remote region is known for having the highest level of marine biodiversity on the planet, with around 75% of the world's coral species to be found here. Though little-visited by tourists, conservationists sounded the alarm about its destruction around 20 years ago, due to destructive practices including shark finning, turtle poaching and unregulated fishing. 

Fortunately, the tides have turned for Raja Ampat. In 2004, it was added to the Bird's Head Seascape project, which took to the task of creating Marine Protected Areas and introducing stricter protections in the area, while ensuring local people could still fish in the waters sustainably. Since its inception, poaching by external fishing operations is down by 90%, many fish populations have rebounded, its beautiful corals are recovering and local peoples' food security has improved.

The sad decline of Britain's bees has been marked far and wide (it even had a plotline in Doctor Who), but now a locally funded conservation project in the South Downs is showing that, given the right support, the insects can still survive and thrive. Sussex residents raised £75,000 ($89,000) to help fledgling charity Bee Lines plant a network of 'wildflower corridors' across the South Downs national park, and preliminary findings suggest a 72% increase in pollinator species as a result.

 

The numbers speak for themselves, but there is still work to be done. Recent research shows that hotter, wetter conditions can stunt wing development in young bees, so tackling climate change remains essential to long-term recovery. An irreplaceable cog in many rural ecosystems, a lot of plant species rely on insect pollinators like bees to reproduce, and a more severe decline could cast an extremely long shadow over the British countryside.

The Great Barrier Reef has endured a small tsunami of bad news in recent years. Mass coral bleaching, polluting pesticides, over-fishing, cyclones and rocketing sea temperatures have all dealt untold damage to the health of one of Earth's most spectacular natural wonders, but conservationists might be starting to turn the tide. Australia's first offshore 'coral nursery' has spawned for the first time, after being planted by the Reef Restoration Foundation four years ago. The acropora corals were grown on underwater frames at Fitzroy Island, just off Cairns, and joined the reef's annual spawning by releasing thousands of tiny pink bundles of eggs into the ocean.

The corals were grown from fragments of other corals that had survived bleaching events, hopefully granting some defense against inevitable future marine heatwaves, and marine biologist Azri Saparwan described watching the spawning as "a beautiful and humbling experience". The Great Barrier Reef is roughly the size of Italy, and no number of nurseries can save it from rising temperatures in the long term. "We always know climate change is the biggest threat," adds Saparwan.

Now take a look at fascinating plant and animal species named after celebrities