Female Mountain Gorillas Reunite with Old Friends

New research from Rwanda shows that female mountain gorillas seek out familiar companions even after years apart. It’s a beautiful reminder that deep bonds and emotional memory aren’t just human traits—they’re woven into the natural world.

In the misty mountains of Rwanda, a quiet miracle unfolds—not in the form of dramatic rescues or scientific breakthroughs, but in the tender reunions of female gorillas.

Recent studies reveal that when female mountain gorillas move between groups—a common part of their social evolution—they actively seek out old friends from previous communities. These aren’t random encounters. They’re intentional, emotional reconnections that speak to the depth of gorilla memory and the importance of companionship.

One researcher described it as “a kind of social glue,” helping females integrate into new groups while preserving the comfort of familiar bonds. 

Why This Is Good News

• Emotional Intelligence in Nature: Gorillas show deep memory and emotional awareness, reminding us that connection is a universal language.

• Hope for Conservation: Understanding gorilla relationships helps conservationists protect not just individuals, but the social fabric of their communities.

• A Mirror to Ourselves: These reunions reflect something profoundly human—our longing to reconnect, to belong, and to be remembered.

In a world often marked by separation, this story offers a gentle truth: connection endures.

ARTICLE SOURCE

10 Uplifting Environmental Quotes

Here are ten uplifting environmental quotes that celebrate connection, stewardship, and the quiet power of care of our beautiful planet.

1. “The Earth is what we all have in common.” — Wendell Berry A reminder that environmental care is a shared language across generations and cultures.

2. “Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.” — Stewart Udall Environmental justice is human justice.

3. “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” — Albert Einstein Nature doesn’t just heal—it teaches.

4. “We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” — David Brower A call to stewardship that honors both past and future.

5. “No water, no life. No blue, no green.” — Sylvia Earle A poetic truth from the ocean’s fiercest advocate.

6. “The environment is where we all meet, where we all have a mutual interest. It is the one thing all of us share.” — Lady Bird Johnson A gentle reminder of our interconnectedness.

7. “What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” — Henry David Thoreau A nudge toward rethinking comfort and sustainability.

8. “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson A beautiful reflection on how our inner world mirrors the outer one.

9. “Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth… these are one and the same fight.” — Ban Ki-moon Environmental advocacy is intersectional.

10. “The single biggest threat to our planet is the destruction of habitat and the loss of precious wildlife. We need to reach a balance where people, habitat, and wildlife can co-exist.” — Steve Irwin From one of Australia’s most beloved voices, a plea for coexistence.

Get more quotes:

My favourite Richard Branson Quotes

Quotes by famous women.

6 quotes about life.

9 Health quotes. 

The Optimist's Creed.

To See and Behold: Why Witnessing Wildlife Is a Radical Act of Hope

In a world often overwhelmed by loss—of habitat, of species, of ecological balance—there is something quietly revolutionary about seeing. Not just observing, but truly beholding the rare and the newly discovered. It’s a form of reverence. A way of saying: You exist. You matter. We will fight for you.

This month, two extraordinary sightings remind us why bearing witness to wildlife is more than a pastime—it’s a call to action.

The Regent Honeyeater, photographed by Jss367

The Regent Honeyeater Returns

In the Queens Lake Nature Reserve on the NSW Mid North Coast, a group of birdwatchers spotted not one, but two critically endangered regent honeyeaters—before they even left the car park. With fewer than 300 individuals left in the wild, these birds are considered ecological ghosts, flitting through fragmented habitats in search of flowering trees and safety.

What makes this sighting even more miraculous? These honeyeaters were wild-born, unbanded, and feeding among other species. Their presence suggests that nature, when given even a sliver of sanctuary, still dares to persist. It’s a reminder that conservation isn’t just about numbers—it’s about dignity, habitat, and the right to exist without vanishing.

A New Manta Ray Emerges

Meanwhile, off the coast of Florida, marine scientists have officially identified a new species of manta ray—Mobula yarae, named after a mythical water spirit from Brazilian folklore. This gentle giant, stretching up to 20 feet wide, becomes only the third known manta ray species in the world. Its discovery is the result of over 15 years of meticulous research, underwater photography, and genetic analysis.

Why does this matter? Because you can’t protect what you haven’t named. Formal recognition of Mobula yarae allows conservationists to track its population, assess threats, and advocate for its protection. It’s a triumph of curiosity, patience, and the belief that the ocean still holds secrets worth saving.

Why Seeing Matters

To witness an endangered species is to stand at the edge of extinction and say, I see you. To discover a new species is to affirm that the world is still unfolding, still capable of surprise. Both acts are deeply human—and deeply hopeful.

They remind us that conservation isn’t just about preserving the past. It’s about co-creating a future where biodiversity is not a luxury, but a legacy.

So the next time you walk through a nature reserve or dive beneath the waves, remember: your gaze is powerful. Your presence matters. And every creature you see is a story still being written.

Germany Breaks a Renewable Energy Record

This is seriously impressive. Just this week, Germany was powered by a record 78% clean energy. It's proof is that solar and wind can keep the lights on in a highly industrialized nation.

ACF is Australian Conservation Foundation

 Germany’s experience shows that solar and wind can keep the lights on in a highly industrialized nation, said Osha Gray Davidson, author of Clean Break, a book about Germany’s transition to carbon-free energy.

Read the full article at takepart

Awarded for services to the environment

Alison Teese was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for services to conservation and the environment at the 2015 Australia Day Awards. The OAM list provides national and formal recognition for Australians who have made a significant difference to their communities.

Alison Teese is a farmer who has been recognised for setting up a philanthropic trust to preserve the nation’s native eucalypt trees. She was raised on a dairy farm in Gippsland, Victoria, in Australia, and her early life shaped her passion for the land and natural science. Her work involves a range of projects that extends from creating bird habitats to conserving native trees.

In 1989, Alison became one of the founding members of the Moolort Landcare Group and still remains an active member today, as she continues to raise awareness of the environment including climate change and land management.

 

Landcare Australia Limited is the leading not-for-profit organisation responsible for raising awareness and funding for the Landcare movement.

 

SOURCE: Landcare's facebook page

 

Living plants generate electricity

A new type of sustainable energy is now available. Living plants are creating clean, renewable, sustainable, efficient, bioenergy.

Bioenergy is renewable energy made available from materials derived from biological sources.

Plant-e is a company that develops and produces products in which living plants generate electricity. To find out more please watch this video.

Sunday somewhere: Mana Pools National Park, Zimbabwe

Mana Pools National Park, Sapi and Chewore Safari Areas are all World Heritage Sites. They are wildlife conservation areas in northern Zimbabwe. It is a region of the lower Zambezi River where the flood plain turns into lakes after each rainy season.

Aerial view of Mana Pools www.1000lonelyplaces.com/

A remarkable amount and variety of wild animals arrive in search of water each year making it one of Africa's most renowned game-viewing regions.  The annual assembly of animals, which includes elephants, zebras, buffalo, leopards, crocodiles, aquatic birds and cheetahs, constitutes one of Africa's outstanding wildlife shows.  The cliffs hanging over the river and flood plains provide shelter to the wildlife thriving in this remote wilderness.
Mana Pools National Park was saved from a hydro-electric scheme which would have seen the flooding of this whole area.



African elephants

Reviving vital traditional knowledge

Slava Cheltuev, is a Telengit community leader and shaman from the Russian Altai Mountain's high altitude Kosh Agach district. 

Whilst traversing Altai's sacred lands, he reflects on our 21st century world and stresses the importance of reviving vital traditional knowledge - age-old wisdom that instruct the respectful and harmonious relationship between local environment and human behaviour.

Find out more from the man himself in the video below.

 

Beautiful bicarb

Beautiful bicarb - Otherwise known as Bi-carb Soda or Baking Soda is cheap, easy to use and enviro friendly.  It has a myriad of uses.

Bicarb can:

• Deodorise your carpet - sprinkle on and leave 10 minutes, then vacuum .
• Absorb food odours - put a small container full in the fridge.
• Remove insecticides and pesticides from fruit and veg - wash produce in warm water which has bicarb in it.
• Restore stained tea cups - apply with a damp cloth and rub and rinse
• Clean juice, wine, and coffee stains from material - rub the spot with bicarb made to a paste with water before washing.
• Kills fleas - apply to pet's fur, wash off to prevent skin irritation.
• Clean iron plate - Mix to paste, rub on surface of iron, wipe off.
• Unclog and freshen drain - 1 cup baking soda and boiling water. 
• Mildly exfoliate your face - add  a few drops of water to bicarb to make a paste - rub on and rinse off.
• Prolong the life of cut flowers - Add a teaspoon of baking soda to a vase of freshly cut flowers.
• Whiten teeth - put bicarb and a drop of water on your toothbrush and scrub teeth about once a week.
• Clean kitchen benchtops - sprinkle with bicarb and add white vinegar - scrub and wipe off.
• Clean and shine Chrome - with Bicarb applied on a damp cloth.
• Remove sweat odours from fabrics - add bicarb to your laundry dispenser.

Do you have a use of beautiful bicarb that you can add?

Change the world in just 5 minutes at a time

Can a bunch of school kids really change the world in five minutes a day? This class of Aussie primary school kids demonstrate over the course of a week that it only takes five minutes a day to make a positive impact—from recycling to planting fruit and veg to collecting old mobile phones and telling jokes.

Keeping plastic out of the ocean

"California is the first state to ban throwaway plastic bags, but this move started in the cities. San Francisco was the first U.S. city to ban the bag back in 2007. Today, more than 150 cities and counties are implementing bans or fees on bags to reduce plastic waste, including Chicago, New York, Austin, Dallas, much of Hawaii, and Washington, D.C. Scaling these changes up to the state level—especially in a big, coastal state like California-- makes a real difference in protecting our oceans. Keeping 13 billion bags out of the water every year is a very good start."

Want to read the full story? Go to the post by Peter Lehner October 7, 2014 in Bag Bans Will Keep Harmful Plastic Out of the Ocean

Young people are carers of our land

Students from Cannon Hill State School in their school garden
PHOTO: Slow Food Brisbane

Australian children will be given extra support as carers of our land.

Landcare activities will be included in the school curriculum under a new program, by Landcare Australia and the Primary Industries Education Foundation.

The program, launched in September 2014, will initially be aimed at primary school students in rural and metropolitan areas.

 

This is good news for Australia's students and teachers and their knowledge of the environment. This is good news for the future of the environment.

 

Good Fact: 76% of primary schools already have some kind of growing program in their schools and Landcare will be supporting these.

"Research shows that I think it's close to 70 per cent of adults in the Sydney Basin, for example, have never seen a working farm, so their actual appreciation of how food grows is very limited." Ben Stockwin of Primary Industries Education Foundation.

The program will provide knowledge and a hands on approach about:

• Caring for the environment
• How food is produced
• Sustainable practices

There are Fact Sheets and learning sequences to help teachers and students.

Audio: Landcare Australia and the Primary Industries Education Foundation have developed curriculum for primary students. (ABC Rural)

Find out full story at ABC Rural
Find out more about Landcare.
Find out more about Primary Industries Education Foundation

A water bottle with edible packaging

Ooho is a spherical membrane for carrying water, which can be eaten after drinking the contents.

Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, Guillaume Couche and Pierre Paslier created the biodegradable packaging using a combination of brown algae and calcium chloride. To drink, you simply suck on the membrane and pour the water into your mouth. The packaging can then be either eaten or thrown away.

Each Ooho bag costs  0.02 USD to make. Ooho could soon be the cheap, environmentally friendly alternative to the plastic bottle.

The video shows the invention in action.

Have you heard of Zinio?

"To see magazines done correctly, look at Zinio" ~ Huffington Post

 

Zinio is all about digital magazines - thousands of them. There are magazines on news, politics, sport, technology, art, style, travel, history and so much more.

They are publishing magazines in the digital domain that you can download to mobile devices, tablets and desktops.

So besides being environmentally friendly they are definitely convenient and have some really cool features too like the Bookmark where you easily save your spot in the magazine you are reading at any time. There are over 5000 publications available in 33 languages and also some magazine articles are available free through the website or smartphone or tablet apps.

Try Zinio Now! Experience digital with a free magazine. Choose from BusinessWeek, Men's Health and more.

More than 3,000 articles are available free at any given time which is wonderful for reading when travelling or anytime. Go to Zinio website to have a look for yourself.

Oh by the way... I am an affiliate for Zinio

Hallie helps the environment

Hallie Turner is an eleven-year-old climate activist.  She has attended marches in Washington, D.C. and writes about climate change and what we can do about it.

For Hallie, it is not just about the Youth March that she led it is a continual and big picture view of taking action for the environment.





LINKS: iMatter
One of Hallies's letters

Recycled Art

Creating good things that are unique and visually inspiring from materials that may have otherwise been thrown out is what these artists are all about. Look at these treasures made from trash...

Recycled Art from an exhibition at Napa Valley Museum

Giant Spiral by Rob Petit made from old mobile phones.
Rob creates only with phones and sometimes incorporates light.

Roman Party Dress by Janet Cooper

 

Moth and Butterfly sculptures by Michelle Stitzlein
who has been creating sculptures with recycled materials since before 2000

9 uses for plastic bottles

Eco friendly design is all the rage so here we have some practical and some fanciful ways to reuse those empty plastic bottles we keep finding everywhere.

Plastic bottle boat crafted made by Rain Tree Lodge - on the island of Viti Levu, Fiji.

                                                  Plastic bottle car canopy

Light by May Lui



Make a bird feeder for your garden or patio

Trashy Glass Earrings use recycled plastic from a water bottle,

                         silver ear wires, and a few simple jewelry techniques.

Lesson on how to make a pair.



Vertical garden

Casa Ecologica de Botellas Plasticas
A whole house made from plastic bottles



Michelle Brand’s Cascade Chandelier.
 



Christmas wreath made by Dale Wayne

Do you have anymore great ideas for using plastic bottles?
Which of these designs do you like best?


Four Corporations That Use Solar Power

The solar power industry is booming in the United States, though you might not know it simply by looking at the statistics.  The U.S. Energy Information Administration and Ecoworld did a survey on solar power usage throughout the world by country, and found that Germany ranked number one, followed closely by Spain and Japan. The United States is ranked 4^th on this list - which is no small accomplishment - however, there is definitely some serious room for improvement.
The US may be lagging behind other countries as a whole, but companies that are based in the United States have been significantly increasing their solar consumption.  The Solar Energy Industries Association and the Vote Solar Initiative found that US chain stores are relying more than ever on solar power companies to provide energy for their facilities.  You may be more than a little surprised when you learn which companies have been utilizing this renewable resource.
Wal-Mart
Many people are shocked to learn that Wal-Mart has been using solar power in some of their stores.  This multi-national retailer has seen a lot of controversy over the years due to many of their policies, and environmental activists have had many negative things to say about some of their products and regulations.  Wal-Mart is more than aware of their environmental shortcomings, and has been slowly trying to become a greener company.  They've recently begun to carry more environmentally friendly versions of their products, and have started to install solar panels on the roofs of many of their stores.
Kohl's
Kohl's is one of the nation's largest retailers, and their special department stores need a lot of power to to operate.  Kohl's has five strategies in place to help lessen their impact on the environment: maximize energy efficiency, minimize waste, responsible building design, reduce climate damaging emissions, and encourage environmental values.  The majority of the power that their stores use is derived from solar power and the company plans to continue to decrease their reliance on non-renewable resources in the coming years.
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson is no stranger to environmental controversy; people have been concerned about the pollution generated from their manufacturing processes as well as the ingredients in their products for many years.  Although Johnson & Johnson may have to improve some of their products and processes, they're doing great when it comes to using green energy.  They use wind power, on-site solar power, and they still manage to purchase renewable energy certificates from wind and biomass facilities.
Intel
When people think of environmentally friendly companies, electronics manufacturers probably don’t come to mind.  Many electronics manufacturers have been often criticized for using environmentally damaging minerals in their products, and for consuming a lot of energy during their manufacturing process.  The Intel Corporation, however, was actually named the largest Fortune 500 green power purchaser from the EPA.  They've purchased more than 1.5 billion solar kilowatt hours each year, and they're one of the largest solar energy users in the state.  Their four corporate locations in California rely on solar power, and many of their other locations also use solar power.
The fact that such an increasing demand on solar power companies comes from the nation’s largest corporations is a great indication of things to come. The United States has clearly expressed a commitment to greener energy consumption, and may very well rise to the top of the list of the most solar-powered countries in the future.

Jessica Holmes is an avid blogger who enjoys blogging about environmental concerns.

CHOOSE A CHALLENGE to help the environment

As individuals there are many things we can do personally to make our own living more sustainable or environmentally friendly. Have you tried or are you doing any of these simple things? They all add up to a better planet.

Turn off the TV for a week.

Walk or cycle nstead of taking the car.

Have 3 minute showers.

Change your light bulbs to more energy efficient ones. Check if they can be disposed of environmentally.

Only wash your clothes in cold water.

Take your re usable bags to the store to bring home your groceries.

Buy local produce. If you are lucky enough to have some earth plant something edible. If you are lucky enough to have a nearby grower's market support it. 

Get more environmental good news, ideas and tips at GNN Good News Network.                                                                                                                                                        

One child's passion for nature

When Maritza was 10 years old she launched an organization for environmental education called HUNAB through which she now trains young people in conservation awareness.

"If children are just told to plant a tree, they do not learn what a tree is, how it grew from a seed, how to care for it. The action has no meaning if we do not create values. But, if people learn, from childhood, to be part of the solution and to love nature and their communities, when they grow up they will be true leaders. That is what our world requires, true leaders who feel a responsibility for the environment," she says.

 

 

 

Maritza Morales Casanova now has a  Bachelor of Science degree and has trained in social planning, conservation strategy, leadership and freshwater aquaculture – all to aid her environmental work. She believes everyone is capable of bringing about change and employs children and teenagers to run HUNAB with her and they are building a park in the Yucatán where children can learn sustainability and then educate others about it.

In 2012 Maritza was given a Young Laureates Rolex Award for Enterprise.  Thanks to funds from Rolex, five open-air classrooms are being built at Ceiba Pentandra in the Yucatan, Mexico. The first visitors to the park, which opened unofficially several months ago, were 70 children from HUNAB’s workshops from three different communities.

When the park is fully operational there will be daily, educational visits for schools and the public – along with summer camps and weekend courses with peer educators – allowing 11,000 students to participate.

I think the moral of the story is to encourage your children's passions for they can grow into something amazing.

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