In a world doing little to fight climate change—what on Earth can be saved? And who are the ordinary citizens around the world fighting to save it? With text, photos and video from several continents, our new conservation series “What Can Be Saved?” will transport your audience to diverse ecological battlegrounds and reveal the unexpected stories of people fighting against climate change.
Coral reefs have started to return in Jamaica thanks to grassroots efforts, and our team was there to chronicle their revival. With in-depth photos, video and text coverage of locally run fish sanctuaries, underwater nurseries and Jamaicans taking matters — and coral — into their own hands, there is new hope that coral reefs can come back from the brink.
Venezuela will be the first country in South America to lose all its glaciers. Our world-renowned journalists trekked to the very northern tip of the Andes to provide a behind-the-scenes perspective on this race against time. This multiformat content covers its fragile alpine ecosystems and then, for the first time in six years, on to Venezuela’s biggest glacier.
An experiment by the U.S. government — killing one species to save another — aims to figure out whether the northern spotted owl's rapid decline in the Pacific Northwest can be stopped by killing its aggressive East Coast cousin, the barred owl. Showcased at the 2019 International Wildlife Film Festival, our coverage follows this project that has prompted litigation and debate.
This Associated Press series was produced in partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
With new multimedia packages released weekly directly onto your platform of choice, accessing What Can Be Saved as part of your news subscription is seamless and simple. The following content will be released starting 17 September:
CORALS: Coral reefs are under stress all over the world, but care and dedication in Jamaica brought them back from the brink. One method: Growing tiny pieces of coral by hanging them on undersea clotheslines and then tying them to rocks.
TREES: Researchers work to restore forests damaged by mining in the Amazon and Appalachia, recognizing that the simple act of planting a tree really does make a difference in the fight against climate change.
OWLS: Kill an owl to save another owl? Sometimes uncomfortable choices are made to save a species from extinction, with the ethical issues involved hotly debated and litigated.
GORILLAS: Once on the edge of extinction, mountain gorillas in Rwanda are rebounding thanks to extraordinary effort, sacrifice and money. Is this what it takes?
ENDANGERED SPECIES: Nearly 1,500 species have been protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act, with only 11 going extinct. When government acts and laws are enforced, the decades have shown us, species can be saved.
OCEANS: By 2020, the world is supposed to earmark 10 percent of its oceans for protection. We visit one of the first protected areas, a 22-square-mile patch of reef off the Georgia coast set aside in 1981, to show what can be accomplished in the efforts to preserve the Big Blue.
GLACIERS: Scientists in Venezuela persevere in their quest to study fragile alpine ecosystems as the country's only glacier quickly disappears and their country is in chaos.
LIONS: In Tanzania, lion survival hangs on whether people can live with the king of beasts on the plains where the earliest humans walked upright through tall grass. The continued existence of lions and other threatened species like cheetahs, giraffes and elephants likely lies in finding a way for people, livestock and wild beasts to share ever-crowded land.
RIVERS: One of Europe's last untamed rivers that courses from Greece to Albania runs free, but for how long? The wild Vjosa is under threat from proposed dam construction along the main river and its tributaries.
PARKS: China wages an enormously ambitious plan to protect and restore natural habitats in one of the most densely populated places on Earth, building on the example of pioneers of the U.S. national parks system
PONDS: Decades of agriculture and development in the U.S. and U.K. have filled in hundreds of ponds, leaving them as barely visible depressions in the landscape. What does restoring them do? It brings back multitudes of birds and other wildlife.
EVERGLADES: The Florida Everglades have been under assault for generations, starved of fresh water, polluted by agricultural runoff, and teeming with invasive species. What if the billions spent every year to reverse the damage can’t ultimately restore them?
