They drained the Everglades to build suburbs. Twenty years later, the panthers are back

Happy Friday. Today's issue has a quiet theme running through it that I noticed only after I'd read all four stories. Every single one of them is about something that was given up on, or nearly was, finding its way back.

A stretch of Florida swampland that a real estate company tried to turn into suburbia. A class of chemicals that environmentalists spent decades fighting to regulate. Ancient walking routes that had been left to fade into obscurity. A subspecies of yak that has fewer than 300 individuals left on earth.

In each case, someone decided it wasn't over yet. Have a wonderful weekend.

Here's your good news.

—Stephanie S

Happy Friday. Today's issue has a quiet theme running through it that I noticed only after I'd read all four stories. Every single one of them is about something that was given up on, or nearly was, finding its way back.

A stretch of Florida swampland that a real estate company tried to turn into suburbia. A class of chemicals that environmentalists spent decades fighting to regulate. Ancient walking routes that had been left to fade into obscurity. A subspecies of yak that has fewer than 300 individuals left on earth.

In each case, someone decided it wasn't over yet. Have a wonderful weekend.

Here's your good news.

👉 P.S. Good News Break exists because we think the world needs a daily reminder that it's not all bad. If that mission matters to you, you can support it for $5 a month and get our full weekday newsletter including exclusive paid content every Tuesday and Thursday

—Stephanie S

In the 1950s, a real estate company called Gulf American bought a vast tract of south Florida wetland and set about draining it. They dug four canals, built causeways, and named it Golden Gate Estates, planning to make it America's largest suburban development. The swamp refused. Picayune Strand sits two feet lower than the surrounding land, making flooding impossible to prevent. Gulf American went bankrupt. The land sat.

Conservationists began buying it up parcel by parcel in 1985, a tedious process that took nearly two decades to consolidate. Once secured, the task was to undo everything Gulf American had done. Roads were torn up, rubble was thrown back into the canals, the canals were plugged, and the Everglades Foundation, Conservancy of Southwest Florida, and US Army Corps of Engineers set about restoring what ecologists call the river of grass, a slow sheet of water that once moved across seven million square miles of south Florida.

Twenty years on, ecologist Michael Duever estimates the area is at roughly 90% restoration. Native wild sunflowers are spreading. The Florida panther is using the land again. The bonneted bat, Florida's largest, is thriving on the restored insect abundance. "Picayune is as good a place in South Florida that there is, in terms of getting it back to what it was before," Duever told Yale News.

The project is described as a microcosm of the entire Everglades restoration plan, the largest environmental restoration in American history, and proof that ecological damage done over decades can be meaningfully reversed within a human lifetime. Read the full story and see the photos of Florida panthers roaming Picayune Strand.

PFAS, the class of chemicals used to make water-resistant, stain-resistant, and heat-resistant coatings, have been called forever chemicals for a reason. They don't break down. They accumulate in soil, water, and living tissue, and have been linked to cancer, hormonal disruption, and immune damage. For decades, environmentalists fought to regulate them while industry pushed back. A new 55-year study of seabird eggs suggests the fight was worth it.

The study, published in the journal Applied Toxicology, analyzed PFAS concentrations in the eggs of northern gannets nesting on Bonaventure Island in Canada, the world's largest gannet colony. Because gannets eat only fish from the heavily industrialized St. Lawrence Seaway, their eggs function as a precise environmental record. What the researchers found was striking: PFOS levels had fallen 74%, PFOA levels 40%, and PFHxS concentrations 70% from their peak in the 1990s.

The timeline tracks directly with regulatory action. The chemical giant 3M dramatically scaled back PFAS production in the early 2000s under regulatory pressure. In 2009, several compounds were subjected to elimination at the UN's Stockholm Convention. In 2015, the chemical sector agreed to phase out PFOA and PFOS entirely. "The regulations are having a good effect," co-author Raphael Lavoie of Environment and Climate Change Canada told the Guardian. Read the full findings and what still needs to happen.

Everyone knows the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Far fewer know that Italy is crisscrossed with equally ancient walking routes, five famous pilgrimage trails that have existed for centuries but operated separately and without coordination. That has now changed. Under an EU-funded initiative called the Antichi Cammini d'Italia, or Antique Trails of Italy, the five routes have been unified for the first time under the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe, with smart signage, a dedicated app, and more than 1,000 points of interest mapped across the network.

The trails range from the approachable to the extraordinary. The Via St. Francis follows sites linked to the Franciscan Order across 304 miles. The Cammino St. Benedict runs 186 miles from Umbria to Rome. Then there is the Romea Strata: 2,900 miles, seven countries, 245 points of interest, and 50 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, reconstructed from ancient pilgrimage routes running from the Baltic down through central-eastern Europe to Rome.

The initiative responds directly to the overcrowding crisis at Italy's most famous destinations. More than 40% of the sites highlighted on the unified network are assets little known in international tourism circuits, drawing visitors toward smaller towns, medieval churches, mountain monasteries, and working farms. Sixty smart devices along the routes provide free Wi-Fi and push notifications about nearby sites in multiple languages. Italy on foot, at a human pace, with almost no one else around. Read the full story and find out which trail suits you.

High in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, at elevations where most animals cannot survive, there lives a subspecies of wild yak whose coat glows a burnished gold. Local legend says the golden yak was given as a wedding dowry by one sacred mountain to another, which is why it can only be found in those particular peaks. Scientists say it can only be found there because it has been hunted, outcompeted, and pushed to the edge of existence. Fewer than 170 to 300 are thought to remain.

China has now performed the first ever cloning of wild yaks, a breakthrough achieved by a partnership between Zhejiang University and the Institute of Plateau Biology of Xizang. Beginning with a genome sequencing effort covering nearly 9,000 wild yaks to build a full genetic inventory, the team succeeded last July in cloning the first yak in history, then surpassed that by cloning 10 at a time. The embryos were delivered naturally by wild yak females without assistance, confirming that the biological process is viable in the wild.

The immediate goal is to establish a new wild herd using genes drawn from across the broad wild yak population, strengthening the species' genetic diversity. The golden subspecies is the ultimate target. Its genome has already been fully sequenced, its unique traits mapped, and it has been designated by scientists as an Evolutionarily Significant Unit of high conservation value. Cloning has worked before: in 2008 it saved the black-footed ferret from extinction, and those offspring have since reproduced naturally in captivity. Read the full story and see footage of the golden wild yak in its mountain home.

🚛 Australia: For the first time, an all-electric semi-trailer truck completed a Sydney to Canberra freight run on a single charge, cutting fuel costs by 84% and arriving 25 minutes faster than a diesel truck on the same route, proving long-haul electric freight is commercially viable today.

💰 South Korea: Samsung's chip workers voted to approve a historic 10-year profit-sharing deal averaging around $340,000 per semiconductor employee this year, ending months of labor unrest that had threatened to disrupt the company's AI chip production.

🕐 Global: A new study published in Nature found that 14 of 15 Australian companies that trialled a four-day work week chose to keep it, with none reporting a loss of productivity and six actually seeing output increase, adding to a growing body of evidence that shorter working hours work.

🏔️ Nepal: Today is International Everest Day, marked with a community rally in Kathmandu celebrating 73 years since Hillary and Norgay's historic summit, and honoring the Himalayan Trust that Hillary founded, which has since built dozens of schools and hospitals across Nepal.

🕊️ Global: Today is also the International Day of UN Peacekeepers, established to honor more than 1 million blue-helmet personnel who have served across 72 field missions since 1948, enabling free and fair elections in 45 countries and negotiating more than 172 peaceful settlements to regional conflicts.

At 11:30 in the morning on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa from Nepal, became the first people confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on earth at 29,035 feet above sea level. They had spent a fitful night at 27,900 feet before making their final push. When they got there, Hillary shook Norgay's hand in what he called "good Anglo-Saxon fashion," and Norgay clasped his partner in a hug and pounded him on the back. They had about 15 minutes of oxygen left. They stayed for 15 minutes, took photographs, and came down.

Hillary radioed the news to expedition leader John Hunt as they descended. His message, relayed through climber George Lowe, was characteristically blunt. They had, he said, knocked the bastard off. News of the summit reached Britain on June 2, the day of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, and was hailed as a good omen for the new Elizabethan age. Hillary was immediately knighted. Norgay, who held no clear citizenship between Nepal and India, was given the George Medal for exceptional gallantry. Both became global icons overnight.

What endures beyond the fame is what Hillary did with it. Troubled by the poverty and lack of schools he had witnessed in Nepal's Sherpa communities, he founded the Himalayan Trust in 1960 and spent the next 47 years returning to Nepal, building schools, hospitals, and infrastructure in remote mountain villages that had none. He said those years of quiet work in Nepal were far more important to him than the hour and fifteen minutes he spent on top of the world. He died in 2008. Today, May 29, is observed internationally as Everest Day.

Other notable May 29 events:

1851: Sojourner Truth delivered her extemporaneous "Ain't I A Woman?" speech at a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio, demanding equal human rights for all women and combining the causes of abolition and women's suffrage in a way that reverberated for generations.

1903: Bob Hope was born near London, going on to host the Academy Awards 19 times and entertain American troops abroad in 57 USO tours between 1941 and 1991, a record of service that he maintained until he was in his 80s.

1999: NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery completed the first docking with the International Space Station, beginning a partnership between crew and station that continues to this day with astronauts living aboard continuously since November 2000.

2001: The US Supreme Court ruled that disabled golfer Casey Martin had the right to use a cart in tournaments, a landmark disability rights decision that generated more controversy in golf circles than perhaps any other ruling in the sport's history.

— Edmund Hillary

Every day brings amazing advances and uplifting moments that remind us just how wonderful the world can be. Here are five reasons why today is the best time ever to be alive:

🌱 Nature Heals Faster Than We Thought: Study after study confirms that ecosystems given adequate protection recover far faster than scientists predicted, with some degraded areas transforming into thriving habitats within a decade, overturning the assumption that environmental damage takes centuries to repair.

🦅 Raptors Returning: Peregrine falcons, once nearly wiped out by pesticide use, have recovered to over 3,000 breeding pairs in North America and are now nesting on skyscrapers in major cities, one of the most remarkable wildlife recoveries of the modern era.

🔬 Detecting Alzheimer's Decades Early: Scientists have developed blood-based tests that can detect Alzheimer's disease 10 to 20 years before symptoms appear, giving people the chance to intervene with lifestyle changes and emerging treatments during the window when they are most effective.

🏗️ Building Safer: Modern earthquake-resistant engineering now routinely protects structures from tremors that would have flattened entire cities a generation ago, with Japan, Chile, and New Zealand having dramatically reduced earthquake death tolls through advances that are spreading globally.

🤝 Diplomacy at an All-Time High: The number of functioning international treaties, multilateral institutions, and formal diplomatic relationships between countries is at a historic peak, creating webs of mutual interest that make large-scale conflict between major powers increasingly costly and unlikely.

Spread a little good news, and good things come back your way.

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