Today’s good news is from the Good News Network.

The Rewilding Europe organization is thrilled to announce the arrival of a small herd of bison in a large valley in Portugal.

Believed to be the key to preventing catastrophic wildfires, invasive species spread, and promoting endemic biodiversity, it’s the first time bison have been present in Portugal since the last Glacial Maximum.

From Poland to Romania to the UK, European wood bison are now firmly recognized as one of the best tools for returning what little wilderness Europe has left to as wild a state as possible.

Once upon a time, all of Europe was covered in forests or scrubland, through which the European bison and the steppe bison roamed. Today, nations across the Old World are trying to reintroduce these large grazers into wild areas to help improve native ecosystems.

In Portugal, a country smaller than Pennsylvania, the gradual abandonment of the Greater Côa Valley has presented an unprecedented opportunity for rewilding.

The government has already set aside a quarter million acres of land for conservation, boasting an exciting mix of natural and semi-natural habitats of scrub, Mediterranean dry forests, and steep gorges.

The Iberian wolf is present on the land in the form of a small pack, and the area acts as a refuge for roe and red deer, wild boar, eagles, and an ancient cattle breed that’s left to roam wild as its ancestor, the mighty auroch, once did across Europe.

The arriving European bison will be managed in cooperation with the Rewilding Portugal team, who received the individuals from the forests of northern Poland, where over 4,000 bison roam wild.

“We are viewing this translocation as a pilot,” explains Rewilding Portugal team leader Pedro Prata. “The bison will be closely monitored to see how they acclimatize to the local landscape and climate. This is the first time the Rewilding Portugal team has managed bison, so it’s also a learning process for us. Members of the team will receive training in bison management.”

It won’t just be new for the team but also for Portugal. The remains of the European bison have never been discovered in the country or on the whole of the Iberian Peninsula.

Scientific evidence has to look back 10,000 years to find a bison in Portugal—the steppe bison—a predecessor of the modern European bison. However, studies of translocated bison in Spain have shown they are at home in the hot, dry climate.

Through their grazing, foraging, trampling, and fertilizing, bison help to maintain biodiversity-rich mosaic landscapes of forest, scrub, and grassland, as well as numerous micro-habitats, which host a wide range of plant and animal species.

Studies in Europe and North America have highlighted this with regard to the related American bison. These same interactions can boost the capture of atmospheric carbon in both vegetation and the soil.

This report is good news since the rewilding of any area is a step closer to the naturalization of the planet. Today’s JohnKu talks about replenishment. I hope you have a super weekend.

Replace by John W. Howell © 2024

Emptying resource,

Is a dangerous action . . .

Replace what you take.

When a severe water shortage hit the Indian city of Kozhikode in the state of Kerala, a group of engineers turned to science fiction to keep the taps running.

Like everyone else in the city, engineering student Swapnil Shrivastav received a ration of two buckets of water a day collected from India’s arsenal of small water towers.

It was a ‘watershed’ moment for Shrivastav, who, according to the BBC, had won a student competition four years earlier on the subject of tackling water scarcity, and armed with a hypothetical template from the original Star Wars films, Shrivastav and two partners set to work harvesting water from the humid air.

“One element of inspiration was from Star Wars, where there’s an air-to-water device. I thought, why don’t we give it a try? It was more of a curiosity project,” he told the BBC.

According to ‘Wookiepedia’ a ‘moisture vaporator’ is a device used on moisture farms to capture water from a dry planet’s atmosphere, like Tatooine, where protagonist Luke Skywalker grew up.

This fictional device functions according to Star Wars lore by coaxing moisture from the air through refrigerated condensers, which generate low-energy ionization fields. Captured water is then pumped or gravity-directed into a storage cistern that adjusts its pH levels. Vaporators can collect 1.5 liters of water per day.

If science fiction authors could devise the particulars of such a device, Shrivastav must have felt he had a good chance of succeeding. In 2019, he and colleagues Govinda Balaji and Venkatesh Raja founded Uravu Labs, a Bangalore-based startup.

Their initial offering is a machine that converts air to water using a liquid desiccant. The desiccant absorbs moisture from the air, and sunlight or renewable energy heats it to around 100°F. The captured moisture is released into a chamber, where it’s condensed into drinking water.

The whole process takes 12 hours but can produce a staggering 2,000 liters, or about 500 gallons of drinking-quality water per day. Uravu has since had to adjust course due to the cost of manufacturing and running the machines—it’s just too high for civic use with current materials technology.

“We had to shift to commercial consumption applications as they were ready to pay us, and it’s a sustainability driver for them,” Shrivastav explained. This pivot has so far been enough to keep the start-up afloat, and they produce water for 40 different hospitality clients.

Looking ahead, Shrivastav, Raja, and Balaji are planning to investigate whether the desiccant can be made more efficient. Can it work at a lower temperature to reduce running costs, or is there another material that might prove more cost-effective?

They’re also looking at running their device attached to data centers in a pilot project that would see them utilize the waste heat coming off the centers to heat the desiccant.

The good news in this article is that smart people are exploring ideas that seem more fiction than reality to solve real problems. Today’s JohnKu talks about the potential of the human brain. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Ingenuity by John W. Howell © 2024

An idea born,

From a sci-fi writer’s brain. . .

Is now feasible.

Today’s good news story comes from the Good News Network.

The Number of Fish on US Overfishing List Reaches an All-Time Low Led by Mackerel and Snapper

According to a recent federal report, the US seafood industry has never been more sustainable, with the fewest overharvested fish stocks ever recorded.

The report, ‘Status of the Stocks,’ was published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It also shows the strength of an industry worth $8 billion a year.

According to the report, 94% of fish stocks in US oceanic and Gulf waters are not being overfished, an all-time high after the number climbed slightly from last year.

NOAA keeps a list of all the fisheries in the country that are subject to overfishing, and the agency said it has recently removed several species: the Gulf of Maine and Cape Hatteras stocks of Atlantic mackerel and the Gulf of Mexico stocks of Cubera snapper.

2022 saw the removal of the Atlantic Coast bluefish and a Washington Coast stock of coho salmon.

“By ending overfishing and rebuilding stocks, we are strengthening the value of U.S. fisheries to the economy, our communities, and marine ecosystems,” said Rick Spinrad, NOAA’s administrator.

GNN recently reported that after decades of overfishing in the northwest Atlantic Ocean, hake fisheries off the coast of Spain are as large as ever thanks to timely and targeted conservation measures.

Additionally, Maine’s Penobscot River recently saw record numbers of Atlantic salmon returning to spawn, but the real trendsetters that far north have been blueback river herring and alewives, which entered the Penobscot in numbers that more than double the previous record.

The good news in this story is that by working together the fishing industry is helping to sustain itself for many years to come. Today’s JohnKu talks about human endeavor. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Hard Work by John W. Howell © 2024

Building back resource,

Is very hard work indeed . . .

Conservation – easy.

Today’s good news story comes from the Good News Network.

To be a drug-sniffing dog, you have to be impassionate, which is exactly what this golden retriever was not.

Though Roger flunked out of the Kaohsiung City police academy in Taiwan, his career in public service was not over. He has now captured the hearts of his people with his rescue efforts during Taiwan’s recent earthquake.

Striking the northern part of the island with a magnitude of 7.4, it caused a landslide in a popular national park that destroyed several buildings and claimed a dozen victims.

8-year-old Roger was quickly deployed to the area, where his exuberance and independent streak put him in good stead for locating the body of a 21-year-old victim who hadn’t been found.

Whether Chen Chih-san, captain of the rescue dog unit of the Kaohsiung Fire Department, has other dogs that assisted in the rescue efforts, only Roger captured the island nation’s hearts because of his earlier career setback and subsequent redemption arc.

“I’m not saying he was not good or that he didn’t get along with others. But the requirement for narcotic detection dogs is that they can’t be too restless and independent,” Chen said. “But (these attributes) are what we want in rescue dogs.”

These attributes were perfectly on show when he lunged for the reporter’s microphone as his handler was being interviewed by Taiwan’s official Central News Agency.

Having participated in 7 rescue organizations throughout his career, which included his being certified by the International Rescue Dog Organization in 2022, an accolade last achieved by a Taiwanese rescue dog in 2019, Roger’s retirement is fast approaching.

CNN reports that he will have a wonderful home suitable for an active, precocious dog like him. However, before he puts his paws up for his golden years, one family will have the closure of laying a loved one to rest because of his excellent nose and personality.

The good news in this story is that just because a body is not best equipped for one job doesn’t mean all jobs are out of reach. Today’s JohnKu talks about careers. I hope you have a great weekend.

Careers by John W. Howell ©2024

One job may not work,

But giving up on the rest . . .

May be a mistake.

Today’s good news comes from the Good News Network.

Two firms in Boston have just laid the foundations of a large building using a zero-carbon cement mixture made in the USA. This represents one of the first real-world real-world adoptions of this technology.

Many companies are testing or subsidizing low- or zero-carbonrbon cement and concrete to reduce their carbon footprint, but few are yet using it liberally to build real structures.

Manufactured by Sublime Systems, which was just named to Fast Company Magazine’s Most Innovative Companies in Sustainability for 2024, the firm uses an electrochemical process to create the cement for ready-mix products.

At the heart of traditional Portland and other kinds of cement is its heating in a kiln, wherein calcium carbonate reacts with silica-bearing minerals to form a mixture of calcium silicates. Over a billion tonnes of cement are made annually, and cement kilns are the heart of this production process. According to The Economist, they heat the mixture to over 1,300°C and produce around 5% of all made-made carbon emissions worldwide.

By eliminating the kiln altogether, Sublime Systems has removed most emissions from the process.

Best of all, it’s currently being used in the Greater Boston Area. Boston Sand & Gravel is supplying Turner Construction Co. with ready-mix cement containing Sublime Systems’ product to form the mud mat of a large building.

“It’s going to be in that building for decades to come,” Sublime Systems’ CEO, Leah Ellis, told Engineering News Record.

“It really was the culmination of a lot of effort to see it not just being done for testing’s sake, but actually, replacing cement that would otherwise have been the carbon-intensive variety.”

Along with reducing the carbon emissions budget of that new building, the construction has validated that several critical targets of Sublime Systems’ product have been met: the product was transported to the site in a ready-mix concrete truck like normal, maintained malleability during transit, was poured out of the concrete truck and into a hose, and the hose was able to deliver it to the setting where it stuck and hardened—all exactly like traditional cement.

“In the grand scheme of things, it was, really, very boring for construction,” David Robb, a Turner estimator and the preconstruction manager on the Boston-area project, told ENR. “But a huge step in terms of our embodied carbon reduction goals that we’re striving toward in the future here at Turner.”

Government money, as well as private investment, has been pouring into Sublime Systems’ which seems poised to lead a great revolution in cement by building its first full-scale, dedicated manufacturing facility in Holyoke, Mass.

The good news in this article is that 5% of worldwide carbon emissions have the potential tto be reduced to zero without sacrificing the quality of construction projects. Today’s JohnKu talks about obscure carbon footprints. I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Concrete by John W.Howell © 2024

Who would have thought that,

The concrete process would yield . . .

Large carbon savings

Wishing you all a peaceful Good Friday

Today’s good news comes from the Good News Network

A community on the Loire in France has come up with a solar-powered idea that will clear two hurdles in a single leap.

The town of Saint-Joachim is located near the Brière marsh, a peat bog that becomes easily inundated with water. The local graveyard rests at 0 feet above sea level, and standing water has become a major problem.

The mayor eventually proposed covering the graveyard to divert the rainwater into catch tanks to water the grass around the cemetery and nearby sporting complex in the dry summer months.

Solar panels—clear, see-through ones, were also proposed for the otherwise basic overhead covering, with each resident receiving a letter explaining the proposal and asking for their opinion on the idea.

97% of Saint-Joachim’s residents liked the concept, and a power-sharing scheme was quickly determined whereby each resident would pay €5.00 for a share of the power generated there, which might be enough to supply around 1,000 people with enough solar power to save a couple hundred euro every year on their electric bills.

The power company in charge of the project designed an algorithm that gathers data on energy usage and determines how much each home needs to meet a fixed percentile of its overall consumption. That way, everyone, from a supermarket to the hairdresser to a single-family home, receives the same energy savings from the cemetery solar power.

The municipality will fully finance the €3.35 million ($3.6 million), 1.2-acre installation using a 7% property tax increase.

“I think it is a beautiful idea,” Éric Broquaire, a local resident and president of Brier’energie, told Euronews. “The purpose was to make it simple, to avoid someone saying, ‘Why don’t I have electricity for free?’ Everybody, even companies, will have the same level.”

The good news in this article is that a community has figured out not only a new source of energy but also a way to distribute it to the residents on a fair basis. Today’s JohnKu talks about fairness. I’m wishing you all a peaceful Easter weekend.

Fairness by John W. Howell © 2024

The distribution,

Of a scarce commodity . . .

Needs fairness also.