An Amur leopard (CC BY 2.0), a coral reef (CC BY 2.0), and two greater one-horned rhinoceroses (CC BY-SA 4.0). Images from Wikimedia Commons.
This post is part of Global Voices’ May 2026 Spotlight series, “Global crisis, local solutions.” This series offers stories of resistance and successful climate action, insight into how communities in the Global South are fighting back against the crisis, analysis of what this might mean for future generations, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.
According to a sweeping 2019 report by the United Nations’ IPBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), over 1 million species are currently on the brink of extinction. This is an alarming figure, and the death of these plants, animals, and ecosystems could have grave ecological consequences up and down the food chain. Humans have caused most of this population decline as we have destroyed animals’ habitats, polluted ecosystems, fueled global warming, and hunted some species to the brink of extinction.
Scientists have been warning about human-driven extinction for over 70 years, and while many have ignored these warnings, some governments, environmentalists, and communities have stepped up and taken action to revive endangered populations and implement protections for them.
In this collaborative piece, Global Voices contributors from around the world share stories of successful conservation work that revived endangered populations in their own communities. These efforts span ecosystems, geography, and species, and can offer a model for future conservation work and population revival.
Wild horses return to their ancestral steppe in Central Asia
Przewalski’s horses in Hustai Nuruu National Park. Image from Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 4.0
The return of Przewalski’s horses from extinction in the wild to their natural habitat is a rare and inspiring success story in animal reintroduction. By the late 1960s, the world had said goodbye to these creatures, as there were none left in the wild.
In contrast to the American mustangs and Australian brumbies, which are feral horses descended from domesticated animals, Przewalski’s horses are genetically and physically distinct from domestic horses, making them the only truly wild horses left in the world.
Named after Russian geographer and explorer Nikolay Przewalski, who in 1878 came across an unusually large horse skull and hide during one of his expeditions in Central Asia. After inspection by the Zoological Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences, researchers concluded that the remains belonged to a wild horse, assigning it the official name Equus przewalski.
The desire to witness and own one of these exotic animals drove many on hunting trips to present-day Mongolia, where these horses had roamed the vast Eurasian steppe for thousands of years — though Przewalski himself failed to capture one of them alive, describing them as “highly anxious” and possessing “an extraordinary sense of smell, sight, and hearing.” Those who were more successful managed to catch only foals, which were transported to Europe and sold to zoos and private collectors.
Between 1897 and 1903, 88 foals were caught in Mongolia, but only 54 survived the long journey by railroad. Eventually, only 12 gave birth in captivity, becoming ancestors of around 2,000 Przewalski’s horses alive today. In the wild, hunting, habitat loss, and competition from domestic animals for grazing grounds drove them to extinction.
“It’s not uncommon for humans to tame wildlife — but it’s much rarer for them to make tame animals wild,” notes Dashpurev Tserendeleg, director of the Hustai National Park in central Mongolia, where Przewalski’s horses were first reintroduced to the wild in the early 1990s.
Przewalski’s horse. Image from Animalia. CC-BY-SA-3.0.
This historic event was preceded by a decades-long breeding program by Dutch and Mongolian conservationists that started in the 1970s. The first batch of 16 takhis, as Przewalski’s horses are known in Mongolia, arrived in the Hustai National Park in 1992.
As of 2026, the park’s count has risen to 450, while the total number of takhis in Mongolia has exceeded 1,000, accounting for half of the global population.
The success of the initial reintroduction program has led to the creation of two additional protected areas in Mongolia: the Great Gobi B Strictly Protected Area in the south and Khomiin Tal in the west, where around 650 takhis roam in the wild.
Additionally, takhis have been reintroduced in China, Kazakhstan, and even Spain, proving international enthusiasm and commitment to build and grow sustainable wild populations for future generations.
Women-led conservation efforts in South Asia
A Bengal tiger in Kanha National Park, Madhya Pradesh, India. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0
Some of the world’s most impressive conservation work has occurred in South Asia, where governments and local citizens have banded together to protect endangered species.
In Nepal, a coordinated national effort between authorities, NGOs like the World Wildlife Fund, and local communities helped the country nearly triple its Bengal tiger population from just 121 individuals in 2010 to 355 by 2022, making it the first nation to meet the Global Tiger Summit’s ambitious doubling target ahead of schedule.
One of the factors behind Nepal’s success is has partnered with Indigenous groups to lead conservation efforts. One example of this is the Pangolin Trail in Kathmandu’s Bagh Bhairav Community Forest, where the Small Mammals Conservation and Research Foundation built an ecotourism trail and handed it over entirely to the Indigenous Tamang community to manage. While this region was once known as a poaching hotspot, now, Indigenous women serve as citizen scientists and guardians of one of the world’s most trafficked animals, simultaneously boosting the region’s ecological profile and the local economy.
Across the border in India, a different kind of conservation story is taking shape in the jungles of Assam. At Kaziranga National Park, home to one of the world’s largest populations of one-horned rhinos, a cohort of young women from rural communities has taken up arms, literally, to defend the park against poachers and human-wildlife conflict.
Two Van Durgas, Mitali and Dipanjoli, patrol for poachers in India’s Kaziranga National Park. Image by Arpita Das Choudhury. Used with permission.
Known as the Van Durgas, or “Goddesses of the Forest,” these female forest guards patrol the park’s most vulnerable zones armed with rifles and navigating flooded terrain, charging rhinos, and nesting cobras. Their presence has had measurable results: the park recorded its last poaching case in 2021, and during the devastating July 2024 floods, the Van Durgas helped guide animals through wildlife corridors while keeping human casualties at a record low.
A tenth life for big cats in Russia
Rare species are almost never saved by a single program, however carefully designed. Instead, multipronged efforts are needed: education, nature reserves, scientific research, rangers, camera traps, and community support. That community involvement can take many forms, including reporting animal sightings, donating money, promoting conservation work, or simply learning to live alongside a predator.
An Amur leopard photographed from a camera trap. Photo by Ministry of the Russian Federation for the Development of the Far East. Fair use.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, only a few dozen Amur leopards remained in the wild in the Far East (Russia). Hunting them has been banned in the USSR since 1956, but that was not enough: leopards continued to die because of poaching, logging, forest fires, and a decline in food sources. Today, the situation is much better: according to camera-trap monitoring, 129 adult Amur leopards and at least 14 cubs were recorded in Primorye, Russia, in 2024.
Each animal has its own pattern of spots, almost like fingerprints, so researchers can identify individual leopards with the help of camera traps and reports from local residents. There is also the Leopard Guardians program: participants become guardians of individual animals, support conservation projects, and can choose a leopard’s name.
The Amur tiger. Image from Flickr. CC-BY-NC-2.0
In the case of the Amur tiger, working with the people who share its habitat became a crucial part of recovery. For ecologists, the tiger is a sign of a healthy Far Eastern taiga. But for a local resident, a tiger may not be a symbol of nature, but a threat to dogs, livestock, or people’s livelihoods.
That is why simple, practical education matters: what to do if you meet a tiger, where to report a conflict, and how to protect domestic animals. In Primorye and Khabarovsk Krai, there are teams that respond to such situations, and residents may receive compensation for livestock or dogs harmed by tigers. If people have a clear way to get help, they are less likely to decide to “deal with” the predator themselves.
According to the 2021–2022 census cited by the Amur Tiger Center, there were more than 750 Amur tigers in Russia, including cubs. Behind that number are not only protected areas and hunting bans, but also NGOs, donors, rehabilitation centers, cooperation from local residents, response teams, and compensation schemes. This is the part of conservation work that helps people and rare animals share the same territory without every encounter becoming a conflict.
Under the sea
A vibrant coral reef. Image from Pexels. Free to use.
While much conservation work focuses on charismatic megafauna — large, popular animals that humans tend to favor, such as elephants, pandas, and tigers — aquatic ecosystems are just as, if not more important, for maintaining Earth’s biome and protecting the planet.
Within the peninsulas and archipelagos of Southeast Asia, the deterioration of marine ecosystems poses one of the biggest threats to coastal livelihoods and global biodiversity. Southeast Asia’s coral reefs encompass about a third of the world’s total coral area and host roughly 76 percent of all known coral species and 37 percent of reef fish species globally, according to Asian Development Bank estimates.
These reefs support keystone species, such as krill and small fish, which act as foundations for the entire marine food chain. They also act as “blue carbon sinks,” absorbing CO2 emissions, much like above-ground rainforests do.
However, these essential ecosystems are under threat.
The World Resources Institute estimates that 88–95 percent of reefs in Southeast Asia are at extreme risk of bleaching, a process in which corals expel the algae living in their tissues, indicating they are under extreme stress and near death.
This process releases massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, kills the biomes that marine life, both big and small, call home, and creates a chain effect of biological collapse that will be devastating for humans and global conservation efforts. This bleaching can be caused by rising ocean temperatures, changing ocean acidity due to pollution and runoff, increasingly extreme tides, and human activities, such as excessive boat traffic or development. Some activists estimate that 90 percent of coral reefs could disappear altogether by 2050.
Healthy pink corals alongside dying bleached corals in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Image from Australian Institute of Marine Science. CC-BY-3.0-AU.
In the face of such a problem, some conservationists are working to simultaneously revive the reefs and repopulate the species that depend on them.
Environmentalists in Indonesia are leading the way in restoring coral reefs through a method known as coral gardening, in which scuba divers cultivate coral underwater and then transplant it to dead or dying reefs. Researchers in Malaysia and Singapore are exploring innovative ways to protect corals and promote growth, including 3-D printing nourishing bases to accelerate coral growth and selectively breeding corals to enhance resilience, with the aim of creating a crop that can withstand the pressures of the climate crisis.
Coastal communities are also pushing back on development projects and urging their governments to implement regulations and protections that will help efforts to revive the reef. Many Pacific Island nations, such as Palau, have implemented sweeping marine conservation efforts, including creating marine sanctuaries where fishing, development, and scuba diving are restricted or banned altogether.
While there is a long way to go, coastal communities in this region have made it clear that giving up is not an option.
Care about sharks? Keep them off your plate
The mustelus canis, also known as the smooth dogfish shark, is often used to make cazóns. Image from Wikimedia Commons / NOAA. Public Domain.
Venezuela, home to the Caribbean’s longest coastline, hosts 123 shark varieties (including rays and chimeras), according to biologist Leonardo Sánchez, head of the Center for Shark Research (CIT), a Venezuelan non-profit.
However, up to 37.5 percent of shark species worldwide are critically endangered and at risk of extinction due to overfishing, according to a 2024 report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
This fact directly collides with Venezuelan culture, as meat from shark pups (commonly called cazón in Spanish) is one of the cornerstones of local coastal cuisine. Making empanadas de cazón — cheap fried turnovers consisting of pastry and shark filling — is a trusted source of income for many lower-income families, especially women. Cazón meat can also be found in other coastal countries in the Americas, such as Mexico.
An empanada vendor at the Conejero Market in Venezuela. Image from Wikimedia Commons. CC0
CIT and other local organizations, such as Proyecto Tintorera, jointly raised their voices in support of sharks in April 2026 with a call to Venezuelan consumers: “Stop eating cazón.” Surprisingly, the campaign was also echoed by major local outlets and gained traction among social media users.
“Cazón meat comes from juvenile, non-mature sharks (several species). They have long gestational periods with few pups and cannot be replaced after intensive fishing. Rays [also eaten in the country] should not replace their consumption, for they are very similar to sharks. They only breed every two years,” said Sánchez in a CIT post. “If they are gone, what will the people who make a living by making empanadas do?”
The specialist proposes replacing meat from sharks and rays with that of other, more populous species. Some renowned local chefs, such as Daniel Torrealba, are already following this advice and do not incorporate cazón or ray meat into their culinary offerings, as noted by El Estímulo. Torrealba explains his decision:
El cazón y la raya (otra especie en peligro) están muy por encima de la cadena alimenticia en los océanos y su extinción le haría mucho daño a ese ecosistema.
The cazón and the raya (another endangered species) sit very high on the ocean food chain, and their extinction would cause significant harm to that ecosystem.
To date, the Venezuelan government has not commented on the CIT’s campaign.
The cases of cazóns, Bengal tigers, Przewalski’s horses, and other animals referenced in this piece highlight that making true progress in conservation and repopulation isn’t just a matter of implementing top-down restrictions. Success requires education, community involvement, research, and behavioral and societal change — and these cases have demonstrated that that change is possible.
These success stories are a model for community-rooted conservation that could help other countries and regions rebuild their withering ecosystems.
