Recommended Stories – Good news for October: thirteen reasons not to throw in the towel

🐈 1. A brand-new cat. In 2026. There are still cats left to discover.

It’s called the tilcayo (Leopardus tilcayo), it measures about 46 cm, and it lives in Bolivia’s cloud forests. It had spent years in an animal refuge, where people took it for a domestic kitten, until biologist Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz suspected it wasn’t. The genes say it split from its cousins 1.4 million years ago, so a house cat it is not. It’s the first new cat species described since 1923, and its name is the one local communities gave it. Very little is known about it and its forest is under threat, but isn’t it lovely that the planet still has surprises up its sleeve?

→ CBS News (EN) | Discover Wildlife (IN)

🌳 2. The tree that refused to die (#storieseverywhere)

The Sycamore Gap tree was a sycamore of around 150 years old, standing alone in a dip along Hadrian’s Wall in England, and one of the most photographed trees in the country. It was deliberately cut down in 2023. Three years later, the stump has sprouted a thick ring of new shoots, between 60 and 90 cm tall. The National Trust puts this down in part to easing the compacted soil and limiting visitors around it. It will be many years before it regains its stature, but it’s alive. Moral of the story: what’s been cut down can grow back.

→ National Trust (EN) | Smithsonian Magazine (IN)

🏺 3. A piece of clay still talking about peace 3,000 years later

Some 3,300 years ago, Ramesses II of Egypt and the Hittite king Hattusili III signed what is considered the oldest surviving international peace treaty. Now, at Hattusa (Turkey), a new fragment of one of its clay-tablet copies has been identified. It contains articles 12 to 20, which deal with how to take in refugees who had fled from one side to the other. It was announced on 21 September, the International Day of Peace, after almost a year of study.

→ Good News Network (EN) | Smithsonian Magazine (IN)

🦍 4. A rescued gorilla goes back to the forest and becomes a mother

Lulingu was taken from her family at 18 months old and sold into the illegal wildlife trade. A sanctuary in the Congo rescued her, and at the end of 2024 she went back to Virunga with three other females. It has now come to light that she has had an infant with a wild male (the birth was in May, but the news has only just been made public), a sign that she has integrated into the forest’s population. She is one of the first eastern lowland gorillas ever returned to the wild, and this birth is a historic first for the project. Let’s stay cautious (raising an infant in the wild is hard), but mother and baby are doing well.

→ Good News Network (IN)

🌊 5. A country doesn’t vanish just because its island sinks

On 24 September, the UN General Assembly adopted, by consensus, its first declaration on sea level rise. It says that countries threatened by the sea do not automatically lose their status as states if their territory ends up underwater. It isn’t legally binding, but for low-lying island nations it’s an enormous show of support.

→ Down To Earth (EN) | Good Good Good (IN)

🌍 6. The High Seas Treaty keeps adding countries (Germany included)

The high seas, the waters that belong to no country, cover almost half of the Earth’s surface. The treaty to protect them has been in force since January and, according to the UN’s count as of 24 September, it now has 101 parties. Germany deposited its ratification on 22 September. The first Conference of the Parties will take place from 11 to 22 January 2027 in New York 🇩🇪

→ German Environment Ministry (DE) | Le Figaro Nautisme (FR)

🐋 7. Norway protects its largest marine area

On 18 September, Norway created the Andfjorden reserve: 1,848.5 km², the equivalent of almost 260,000 football pitches. It is home to cold-water coral reefs, kelp forests, whales and seabirds. It will be run by a board made up of municipalities, regional authorities and the Sámi Parliament. A celebration was planned on the island of Andøya on 6 October.

→ Government of Norway (EN) | Good News Network (IN)

🛡️ 8. The ozone hole keeps shrinking

It looked like a problem with no solution, and then the Montreal Protocol (1987) was signed to stop using the gases that caused it. It worked. On 16 September, World Ozone Day, the World Meteorological Organization announced that the Antarctic ozone hole in 2025 was one of the smallest since the 1990s. The layer has been recovering since 2000, and it is expected to heal fully within a few decades. Moral: treaties sometimes work.

→ Blue News (EN) | UNEP Ozone Secretariat (IN)

🧠 9. Alzheimer’s is no longer seen as “hopeless”

The World Alzheimer Report 2026 (from Alzheimer’s Disease International, launched on 21 September) says there are 158 treatments under study across 192 clinical trials. The first approved drugs already slow progression a little in the early stages. A cure isn’t here yet, but the report itself speaks of a new era.

→ ScienceAlert (EN) | The Week (IN)

☀️ 10. California legalises “plug-in” solar panels

On 30 September, a law was signed that allows one to three small panels to be placed on a balcony, patio or fence and plugged straight into the wall, without having to ask the electricity company for a connection permit (up to 1,200 W per household). It’s the tenth US state to do so. If you live in Germany, this will sound familiar: they’re already common here. The good news is that tenants and people without a roof of their own can save on their bills too.

→ KQED (EN) | pv magazine (IN)

🚑 11. The world’s first solar ambulance (built by students)

It’s called Stella Juva and it was built by 23 students at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. It doesn’t transport patients: it takes medical care to places with no electricity grid or reliable fuel. When parked, it unfolds extra panels and generates more energy than its medical equipment uses, and its battery keeps it running at night. In Kenya, working with the NGO Amref Health Africa, it completed more than 800 km of trials.

→ Euronews (EN) | Africanews (AFP) (IN)

🍽️ 12. Spain, the EU country that throws away the least food

According to Eurostat data, each Spaniard wasted 54 kg of food in 2024, compared with an EU average of 129 kg. Spain has topped this ranking since 2020. A word of caution: total food waste across the EU rose by 0.7%, so there’s still work to do, but we’re clearly doing something right.

→ Cuéntame Algo Bueno (ES) | Eunews (IN)

📸 13. And for dessert: the funniest animals of the year

The Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards have announced their 40 finalists for 2026, chosen from more than 10,000 photos from 112 countries. There’s an indignant little bird (“Angry Bird”), an orangutan with a rather undiplomatic gesture (“Spicy Orangutan”) and a “Little Godzilla”. The trick is that they use humour to build empathy for wildlife, and that empathy is what moves people to look after it. The winners will be announced on 8 December in London.

→ Good News Network (EN) | Time Out (IN)

That’s all for this time. And now it’s your turn: what good news have you read this week? Or what good thing has happened to you, even a small one? Tell me in the comments. 💙

A big hug,
Angela

Angela Cuevas Alcañiz

Stories are everywhere, they surround us. In the end, we all become stories.