Scotland’s rewilders blazed a trail, hundreds of firms adopted a four-day week, and a mountain was granted rights, plus more good news
This week’s good news roundup

A community led rewilding site in Scotland has seen a near doubling of its native woodlands over the past 30 years – a feat achieved simply by removing sheep and deer.
Woodland cover at Tireragan (pictured) on the Isle of Mull grew from 56 hectares in 1994 to 93 hectares in 2024, according to the rewilding charity Scotland: The Big Picture. The increase has been good news for key species such as the pine marten (main picture), according to Aidan Maccormick, a rewilding officer at the charity.
“In 2024 our camera traps recorded pine marten for the first time, and the site is also home to breeding white-tailed eagle, golden eagle and hen harrier,” he said. “It’s a great example of what can be achieved by reducing grazing pressure and allowing nature to take its course.”
Image: Scotland: Big Picture

A new rainforest is taking shape in England, where volunteers have spent the winter transforming a barren field once used for grazing into a fledgling woodland.
Around 2,500 saplings have been planted at Bowden Pillars near the Devon market town Totnes, with a further 4,500 native trees due to go in the ground by the end of winter.
Temperate rainforests once covered swathes of the British Isles, but today only small, fragmented patches remain. As well as being vital carbon stores, temperate rainforests support an abundance of wildlife, including birds such as pied flycatchers, woodcock and redstarts.
The Bowden Pillars project is part of a nationwide rainforest restoration effort led by The Wildlife Trusts – a federation of conservation charities – in partnership with the insurance giant Aviva. Similar projects are taking place in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
“The mature temperate rainforest will take several decades to become established, but the gains for nature will be much swifter,” said Claire Inglis of the Devon Wildlife Trust. “It will be fascinating to see how it develops.”
Image: Samuel Hess/Alamy

It was once brushed off as utopian thinking, but this week the four-day week became a reality for thousands more UK employees, as 200 firms committed to a shorter working week with no loss of pay for staff.
Tech companies, construction businesses and accountancies were among the businesses making the switch after participating in a recent trial. They collectively employ an estimated 5,000 people.
“It’s worked really well for us,” said Amy Spooner, assistant director at the marketing agency VerriBerri, which made the switch four years ago. “There’s a more positive energy in the office.”
Around 1.5 million employees are thought to work a shorter week in the UK, which in 2022 ran the world’s largest four-day week trial. It was linked with improvements in staff wellbeing and retention, and led to no notable dip in productivity. Critics question whether such results can be sustained, but an increasing number of UK companies are willing to find out.
“This is a progressive issue that the UK is leading on,” Joe Ryle, campaign director of the 4 Day Week Foundation, told Positive News. “And it’s just the beginning; as new technology comes in, workers can be freed and have more leisure time. I think there’s an inevitability to the four-day week becoming mainstream.”
Image: Richard Jaimes

A new technique for detecting bowel cancer is more than 90% accurate at predicting which higher-risk people will go on to develop the disease, researchers said this week.
Around half a million people in the UK are estimated to have inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Having these conditions can increase your risk of bowel cancer.
Currently, people with IBD are screened for pre-cancerous cells, which, if detected, indicate a 30% chance of developing bowel cancer within a decade. The new test, however, was shown in a trial to be 90% accurate at predicting whether the pre-cancerous cells would become cancerous within five years.
The test was developed by researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and uses an algorithm to analyse DNA changes in the pre-cancerous cells.
“Our test and algorithm give people with IBD, and the doctors who care for them, the best possible information so that they can make the right decision about how to manage their cancer risk,” said the institute’s Prof Trevor Graham. “We can accurately identify those people at high risk while putting the minds of many others at rest.”
Image: iStock

A Scottish court has ruled that consent for two new oil and gas fields was granted unlawfully because the previous UK government did not account for the emissions that would arise from burning the extracted fossil fuels.
The judgement on the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields came following a case brought by the environmental groups Uplift and Greenpeace at the court of session in Edinburgh. The court ruled that the government must now consider the full environmental impact of the emissions from the fields, and make a new decision on whether the projects can continue.
“This is a historic win – the age of governments approving new drilling sites by ignoring their climate impacts is over,” said Philip Evans, senior campaigner at Greenpeace UK. “The courts have agreed with what climate campaigners have said all along: Rosebank and Jackdaw are unlawful, and their full climate impacts must now be properly considered.”
Image: iStock

A mountain in New Zealand has been granted the same legal rights as a human – a move welcomed by Indigenous people, who consider it their ancestor.
Mount Taranaki — now known as Taranaki Maunga, its Māori name – was granted human rights on Thursday. They will be used to uphold the mountain’s health and wellbeing, including protecting the wildlife that flourishes there.
A newly created entity will be ‘the voice’ of the mountain. It will include members of the Māori community and members appointed by the country’s conservation minister.
Taranaki Maunga is the third natural feature in New Zealand to be granted legal personhood, following Te Urewera in 2014 and the Whanganui River in 2017.
Image: Dave Young

A pesticide blamed for wiping out bee colonies has been banned for emergency use in the UK for the first time in five years – a move welcomed by ecologists but opposed by farmers.
Cruiser SB – a neonicotinoid pesticide – is used on sugar beet to kill aphids, which spread a plant disease known as virus yellows. It’s also fatal to bees and is banned in the EU.
The UK has approved its emergency use every year since leaving the bloc, but this week the new government rejected an application from the National Farmers’ Union and British Sugar to use the pesticide.
“Bee populations have been absolutely decimated over recent years with the use of neonicotinoids fingered as a serious cause,” said Greenpeace UK’s policy director, Doug Parr. “Now that the doom-loop of annual ‘emergency’ authorisations of these bee-killing chemicals has been broken, hopefully this marks the beginning of their recovery.”
The ban was criticised by sugar beet farmers who have no direct replacement for Cruiser SB.
Image: Kristine Zale

Patches of lab-grown muscle could be used to mend damaged hearts, German scientists suggested this week, as a clinical trial of the procedure showed promise.
For the trial, which is ongoing, patches of muscle were grown from another person’s stem cells in a lab, and then grafted on to the beating hearts of 15 heart failure patients. One is reported to have already benefited from the procedure, which bought her time to wait for a heart transplant. Researchers reported no side-effects.
Scientists from University Medical Center Goettingen, Germany, which is leading the trial, said the early results offered “proof of concept”. The advancement, they added, could eventually help the millions of people worldwide who have heart failure, though they cautioned that the trial is small and in its infancy.
Image: Kenny Eliason

Electric vehicles (EVs) last almost as long as their petrol rivals and significantly longer than smut-belching diesel cars.
That’s according to a new study published in the journal Nature Energy. It found that electric cars have an average lifespan of 18.4 years, compared to 18.7 years for petrol cars and 16.8 years for diesels.
Researchers behind the study examined the MOT records of 300m cars in UK. MOTs are compulsory annual checks for vehicle roadworthiness.
“Although early battery electric vehicles (BEVs) exhibited lower reliability than internal combustion engine vehicles, rapid technological advancements have allowed newer BEVs to achieve comparable lifespans, even under more intensive use,” the study concluded.
Norway is leading the global race to decarbonise the roads. Fresh data shows that 88.9% of new cars registered in the country last year were electric. The rollout of EVs is also gathering pace in the UK, which, according to some experts, has passed “peak petrol”.
Image: Andrew Roberts

In a win for people power, residents of an English town have won the right to build a community led development that will include homes, workspaces, a hotel and lido.
The Mayday Saxonville scheme in Frome got the green light after councillors agreed to sell a five-hectare brownfield site to those behind the nonprofit project.
“We have been working toward this moment for nearly six years, it will be an incredible moment for us and our town,” said Damon Moore, director of Mayday Saxonville. “Community-led development is still relatively new in the UK, and this development could lead the way forward as a blueprint for other developments of its kind across the UK.”
The news comes amid a surge in interest in community-led enterprise in the UK. Last year, the country’s first co-operative rail firm was given the go-ahead and is now crowdfunding to buy rolling stock. Pubs, post offices and energy projects have also been taken over by communities.
Image: Mayday Saxonvale

As Positive News reported earlier this week, a book has been published to preserve the courageous words of female writers in Afghanistan.
My Dear Kabul is composed of the messages an Afghan women’s writers’ group shared with each other as the Taliban regained control of the country and imposed draconian restrictions on women.
“This regime is not chosen by the people. It cannot last for ever,” wrote Marie, who fled Afghanistan for Germany. “We have a proverb: ‘At the end of every night, there is a morning. At the end of every darkness, there is sunshine’. And meanwhile, we are writing.”
In another show of unity and defiance, Afghanistan’s female cricketers have played their first game since fleeing their homeland three years ago. The athletes came together this week for a charity match in Australia. Captain Nahida Sapan said that she hoped it would be “a movement for change”.
Illustration: Nathalie Lees for Positive News
Main image: Scotland: The Big Picture
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