10 Good Things That Flew Under the Radar, Like Bhutan Ending Rabies Deaths From Dog Bites

In July 2026, the FDA approved enlicitide, the first pill in a class of strong cholesterol drugs called PCSK9 inhibitors. Until now, these drugs came only as injections.

In a 24-week trial of 2,912 people, the daily pill lowered LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol by up to 60%, including in people already taking statins. It lists at $10.50 a day. Whether it also prevents heart attacks isn’t known yet.

On Oct. 16, Brazil’s space research institute, INPE, released satellite data showing that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell 42% in a year, to 3,335 square kilometers, or 1,288 square miles. That is the lowest since measurements began in 1988, and an area smaller than the Spanish island of Mallorca.

Clearing in the Cerrado, the wooded savanna next to the rainforest, fell 24%, also to a record low.

On Sept. 4, 2026, the World Health Organization confirmed that Bhutan has eliminated dog-transmitted rabies as a public health problem, the first country in WHO’s South-East Asia Region to do it. No one in Bhutan has passed away from rabies from a dog bite since June 2023.

Volunteers from the national De-suung service helped bring dog vaccination to every part of the country, and anyone who is bitten can get free shots in all 20 districts. Dogs cause up to 99% of human rabies cases worldwide.

In July 2026, Porto became the first city in Portugal to make public transport free for all its residents. The metro, city buses, urban trains and the tram are all included.

Residents ride with the free city card, the Cartão Porto, which now works as a free metropolitan pass. The city expects to pay 20 million to 25 million euros a year to cover the fares and plans to raise its tourist tax to help pay for it. Visitors still buy tickets.

The International Rhino Foundation’s State of the Rhino 2026 report, released in September, puts the greater one-horned rhino at 4,075, up from fewer than 100 in the early 1900s. About 3,323 live in India and 752 in Nepal.

In 2025, Assam, the Indian state that is home to most of them, recorded no known rhino poaching, only the second time since the 1970s. Nepal had none either. Kaziranga National Park alone has more than 2,600.

On Aug. 27, plug-in “balcony” solar panels went on sale in the UK for the first time. The kits hang on a balcony, terrace or shed roof and plug into a normal wall socket, so people in flats or rented homes without roof access can make some of their own electricity.

Prices start at about £400 to £500. The 800-watt kits can’t power a whole home, but they could save a household up to £110 a year. In Germany they are common enough to have a nickname: Balkonkraftwerk, “balcony power plant.”

Off Monterey, California, divers from the nonprofit Sunflower Star Laboratory are placing captive-raised sunflower sea stars, which can grow up to 24 arms, in cages on the seafloor with the doors left wide open, so the stars can wander out and settle. The Guardian joined one of the dives in October.

The sea star eats purple urchins, which stripped much of the kelp after the stars vanished from the coast in the past decade. Kelp, often called the redwoods of the sea, can grow taller than a 10-story building.

In August, the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy released the results of its 2025 International Coastal Cleanup, the world’s largest single-day volunteer ocean cleanup. About 630,000 people removed almost 13.9 million pieces of trash from more than 15,000 miles of coastline and waterways.

Plastic bottles topped the list, at more than 1.3 million, followed by over 1.2 million cigarette butts. The very first cleanup, 40 years ago, had 2,800 volunteers on the Texas Gulf coast.

In June 2026, a California state commission approved returning 136 acres of Blues Beach and the coastal bluffs around it, in Mendocino County, to Kai Poma, a nonprofit created by the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, the Round Valley Indian Tribes and the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians.

The 2021 state law behind the transfer keeps the land open to the public and bans commercial activity there. The tribes plan to use it to gather food and medicine and for ceremonies.

On Oct. 13, 2026, the Nature Conservancy of Canada announced that it had conserved more than 81,400 hectares, about 200,000 acres, of boreal forest, wetlands and peatland south of Kapuskasing, in northern Ontario. It is one of the largest private land conservation projects in the province’s history.

The peat stores a huge amount of carbon, and the deal protects the land from commercial logging. It is also home to at-risk birds such as the Canada warbler and the olive-sided flycatcher.