For those of us depressed by the continuing hammer blows delivered to the environment by humans, there are a few bright spots. A couple below, although one can’t sugarcoat them.
Bengal Tiger Resurgence
I recently heard that the population of Bengal Tigers is on the upswing in India (they have been increasing in Nepal too). I couldn’t find that recent story with a Web search, but here’s a report from January 2015, with numbers cited by India’s Environment Minister: Bengal Tiger Numbers Up
Assuming we can trust NDTV and India’s environment minister, these are promising numbers—an increase of 58% in seven years.
Unfortunately, there’s a downside to these stats: the populations are scattered, meaning genetic diversity is still low, and the total number of the big cats, unsurprisingly, is 1/50th of what it was circa 1900 (then 100,000). At the same time, India’s human population has gone up by a factor of 4.