They used to hunt the animals. Now they protect them

Happy Wednesday. In nine villages in West Kalimantan, Borneo, locals who once hunted birds and exterminated crop-raiding animals are now competing to photograph them instead — and getting paid for every confirmed sighting. A 72-year-old farmer goes into the jungle every day with her friends hoping to spot an orangutan. That's today's lead.

We also have Vietnam racing to protect the last 250 of the world's most endangered monkey, a Norwegian fjord the size of 260,000 football pitches just declared a marine sanctuary, and French farmers growing papayas and 26 varieties of banana near Toulon. Plus Mozart's Magic Flute premiered 235 years ago today.

Dive in.

—Stephanie S

Across nine villages in West Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, over 800 local people are now earning supplemental income by photographing and recording the wildlife around them. A villager can earn up to $200 a month for confirmed observations — more for rare species, with the Bornean orangutan commanding the top prize. Before the program launched, locals routinely hunted birds for their colorful plumage and exterminated deer and wild boar that raided their crops. Now, as one participant put it: "We really, really want to protect them."

That shift in three words captures everything. Imelda, a 72-year-old farmer in the village of Labian, goes into the jungle every day with her friends hoping to photograph an orangutan. Octavius, a 50-year-old kratom and cacao farmer, uses the extra income to pay for his children's college educations. The program, called KehatiKu and run through the international conservation consultancy Borneo Futures, has so far generated 378,000 confirmed wildlife observations — including Critically Endangered Bornean orangutans, Abbott's gibbons, and a flat-headed cat, one of the least-understood cats in the world.

The $300,000 philanthropic program, funded through 2028, pairs a mobile app for uploading sightings with an AI identification companion and monthly cash payments. Scientists are using the flood of observations to estimate population densities, track animal ranges, and gain new insights into wildlife behavior. Erik Meijaard, Managing Director of Borneo Futures, wrote that the program has produced "spontaneous wildlife protection" — and next month, two more villages will join. See what the flat-headed cat looks like, and discover what scientists are learning about a species almost no one has studied before.

The Delacour's langur — named after the French biologist who first identified it — is one of the most critically endangered primates anywhere. Only about 250 individuals survive across perhaps 17 fragmented populations in northern Vietnam, clinging to karst limestone escarpments in a landscape that has been steadily eaten away by logging and agriculture. Authorities in Ninh Binh Province just took a significant step to change that, officially designating 7,500 acres as the Kim Bang Delacour's Langur Habitat Conservation Area.

The reserve spans three wards — Ly Thuong Kiet, Tam Chuc, and Nguyen Uy — including the UNESCO-listed Tam Chuc landscape of rice fields, lazy rivers, and towering jungle-cloaked pinnacles. Of the total, 4,400 acres will receive the strictest protection for the species, with an additional 3,500 acres set aside specifically for ecological restoration. The langur is a notoriously slow reproducer — females reach maturity around age four, carry a single infant for seven months, and nurse for nearly two years.

Strict management plans will monitor the slowly recovering populations alongside efforts to strengthen forest quality and reduce human pressure on the landscape. Ecotourism linked to biodiversity protection is also planned, giving local communities a stake in the langur's survival. Find out what makes this particular patch of Vietnam so critical — and why its national parks alone weren't enough to save the species.

On September 18th, the Norwegian government established the Andfjorden Marine Protected Area, covering approximately 714 square miles of Arctic waters — equivalent to nearly 260,000 football pitches — in the northernmost reaches of Nordland and the southernmost tip of Troms. The protected area spans three municipalities and shelters an extraordinary range of marine habitats: coral reefs, coral gardens, sponge and sea-pen communities, kelp forests, and rare maerl beds, all serving as critical spawning, nursery, and feeding grounds for fish, whales, and seabirds.

Minister of Climate and Environment Sigrun Aasland called the designation a gift to future generations. "The protection will help ensure that future generations can also enjoy the natural values of Andfjorden," she said, adding that the area "contributes both to our food supply and to unique nature experiences." The protected area will be managed by a dedicated board that includes not only the municipalities and county authorities but also the Sámi indigenous parliament.

Andfjorden is one of 36 areas included in Norway's Marine Protection Plan from 2004. With today's designation, 24 of those 36 areas are now protected, and the proportion of Norway's mainland territorial waters under formal protection rises from 4.8% to 6%. See how this announcement fits into a wave of new marine reserves being established across the globe.

Dominique Berdin runs a greenhouse in the commune of Ollioules, in the Var Department near Toulon, where she grows 20 different tropical fruits — passion fruit, pineapples, mango, papaya — entirely pesticide-free, year-round. "I'm probably the only papaya grower in France!" she told France24, laughing. Her explanation for how this came to be is simple: "Our climate is now suitable for these crops. If we are willing to adapt, it might turn into an opportunity to grow our own tropical fruit instead of shipping it from across the globe."

She isn't alone. Young agronomist Johan Bultel works alongside her, specializing in bananas — cultivating 26 different varieties sourced from Honduras and the Reunion Islands, some in a greenhouse and some on the exposed, windy slopes of his land. Local farmer Isabelle Pertois made the shift after Europe's recent heatwaves made her usual organic vegetables too difficult to sustain through scorching summers. Her tomatoes and squash now grow in the shade of citrus trees, while banana trees have grown so vigorously they've ripped through the roof of her greenhouse.

"It's like I'm in the Caribbean!" Pertois said. A local dragon fruit grower has doubled his yields with agronomist help, and many other farmers across the region are experimenting with tropical crops. Discover which other tropical fruits Dominique is growing in her Ollioules greenhouse — the full list of 20 goes well beyond what you'd expect.

📸 Global: British photographer Henley Spiers won the Bird Photographer of the Year 2026 grand prize for "Sunball Rocket" — a northern gannet caught mid-dive through the ocean's surface off Shetland, Scotland, its body locked into a torpedo as sunlight filtered down from above. More than 24,000 entries were submitted, and the competition donated over £5,000 to its partner charity, Birds on the Brink.

🐦 West Africa: Researchers from the International Bird Conservation Partnership spotted a Ghana cuckooshrike — vibrant orange, yellow, and black — in Côte d'Ivoire's Taï National Park, the first confirmed sighting in 13 years. Of more than 11,000 known bird species, only 114 have gone undocumented in the past decade, and every currently recognized "lost bird" in West Africa has now been found.

🐘 Hungary: Hungary has officially banned the use of wild animals in circus performances from January 1, 2027, closing the last remaining loophole in the EU. The ban covers 25 animal groups including elephants, big cats, bears, and giraffes, with 24 of 27 EU member states now restricting wild animal circus acts.

🌊 Global: The High Seas Treaty — the world's first legal framework to protect ocean life in international waters, covering nearly half the planet's surface — reached 100 ratifying nations at the UN General Assembly this week, with Germany, Canada, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Zimbabwe, and Brunei among the latest to commit.

🌍 Global: Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres — who led negotiations for the 2015 Paris climate agreement — has been named the inaugural recipient of the Jane Goodall Earth Medal, a new honor created by the Starmus Festival to recognize those who "unite science, courage and responsibility." Jane Goodall, who died in October 2025 at age 91, had endorsed the medal's creation herself.

On September 30, 1791, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart conducted the world premiere of The Magic Flute at the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna. He was 35 years old. The two-act opera, set to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, blended singing with spoken dialogue in a form popular at the time — and told the story of a prince sent to rescue a captive princess, only to discover the world is not what it seems. Mozart conducted it himself just two months before he died of an unknown illness, never knowing it would become one of the greatest operas ever made.

The Magic Flute was an immediate popular success, and Mozart reportedly attended multiple performances before he became too ill to leave his bed. In the opera, Prince Tamino and his earthy companion Papageno undergo trials of initiation — Tamino succeeds, Papageno fails, but both are rewarded. The mythical Queen of the Night, with her ferocious coloratura aria, has become one of the most iconic roles in all of opera.

Other notable September 30 events:

1972: Roberto Clemente recorded his 3,000th career hit, 54 years ago today — the last of his career. Three months later, he died in a plane crash while delivering humanitarian aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.

1962: César Chávez founded the United Farm Workers, 64 years ago today, launching one of the most consequential American labor movements and transforming conditions for agricultural workers across the country.

1966: Botswana celebrated independence from Britain, 60 years ago today — now one of Africa's most stable and prosperous democracies, marking a perfectly round milestone.

1960: The Flintstones premiered on American television, 66 years ago today — the first animated series to hold an evening prime time slot, featuring Mel Blanc as Barney Rubble in the "modern stone-age family" for six beloved seasons.

— Jane Goodall

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:

🌿 Plastic That Dissolves in the Ocean: Scientists are developing fully biodegradable plastics made from marine algae and seaweed that break down in seawater within weeks, leaving behind no microplastics and no petroleum residue. At industrial scale, this could replace the single-use plastics currently choking ocean ecosystems worldwide.

🧠 Giving Voice Back to the Voiceless: Researchers have developed brain implants that decode the neural signals for intended speech in real time, translating brain activity into synthesized words for people with paralysis or ALS. Some participants are now communicating at speeds approaching natural conversation — without moving a muscle.

🛰️ Satellites That Can Catch a Methane Leak Anywhere on Earth: A new generation of satellites can now pinpoint individual methane leaks from oil and gas infrastructure from orbit, with enough precision to identify the specific facility responsible. Real-time emissions enforcement, from space, is now possible.

🐟 Fish Oil Without the Fish: Scientists are engineering microalgae and yeast to produce the same omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil at commercial scale, eliminating the need to harvest billions of forage fish annually from already-stressed oceans. The same nutrition, none of the ecological cost.

🌱 Crops That Remember Hardship: Researchers have discovered that plants exposed to drought develop epigenetic "memories" of the stress that make their offspring more resilient — without any genetic modification, through priming alone. Stress-hardened crops that adapt across generations could transform food security in an era of climate volatility.

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