Positively Newsworthy
Good News From Around The Globe
Our Winter 2025 Issue has hit the shelves! With the theme of Divinity, each page is filled with love, positivity, and inspiration. Head to a health shop near you to pick up your copy, or have a copy delivered to your door each season at positivelife.ie/subscribe <3
The dog of the hour
A rescue in the nick of time
by Aisling Cronin
A heroic dog named Freyja has been hailed as a hero in Dorchester, New Hampshire in the United States, after she helped rescue a lost toddler from freezing conditions.
On the afternoon of October 10th, temperatures had fallen to 4 degrees Celsius and were expected to drop below zero when a local mother called emergency services to frantically explain that her 2-year-old daughter and the family dogs were missing.
Fire and rescue teams, together with state and local police, were soon joined by volunteer searchers who wanted to help find the child, and soon 90 people were scouring the woods around Dorchester.
“Everybody dropped what they were doing and came over extremely quickly, knowing the temperature was dropping,” Sgt. Christopher McKee of New Hampshire Fish and Game told the Washington Post.
Among the volunteers was Jeremy Corson, an experienced search and rescue volunteer. Corson works full-time as a software engineer, but he volunteers with New England K9 Search and Rescue. He arrived on the scene with his seven-year-old German Shepherd Freyja, a trained scent tracking dog.
“The dog and the handler are very much a team,” Corson said. “We do the human part of it, figuring out how the wind moves and how to move through the area – and the dog provides the nose … she brought us right into it.”
While the volunteers searched, the two family dogs returned home, causing rescue teams to fear that time might be running out. However, at about 8pm, Corson heard a voice call out as he followed Freyja, who was trailing the child’s scent with her nose to the ground. Happily, the toddler was discovered and returned to her grateful family – the mother was overwhelmed and “broke down” upon hearing the news.
Freyja’s reward? Corson bought her a brand new ball.
Slow and steady…
Turtles are making a comeback
by Aisling Cronin
A new study has revealed that sea turtles – once threatened by overhunting and habitat loss— have seen their populations rebound in recent years.
“Sea turtles are a shining light of marine conservation with recoveries of many nesting populations,” said Marine Science Professor Graeme Hays at Deakin University in Australia.
Scientists at Deakin University collaborated with the US’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries researcher Jeffrey Seminoff to review the status of all seven species of sea turtles around the world.
Their findings, published in the Nature Reviews Biodiversity journal, discovered most sea turtle populations rebounding worldwide, with more turtles nesting at beaches with stronger protections in place. Artificial lighting that can confuse baby turtles trying to find the ocean has been reduced or removed in many locations, and many regional fisheries have adopted measures to avoid catching turtles.
Four of five regional populations of green sea turtles are increasing, including a 500% increase in eggs laid in the Seychelles.
Most nesting sites – including the largest loggerhead maternity ward in the Mediterranean – also showed sharp increases for that species, some by nearly two orders of magnitude. For example, between 2008 and 2020 the annual number of loggerhead nests increased from around 500 to 35,000 in Cape Verde in the North Atlantic Ocean.
“When I think of sea turtles, the first word that comes into my mind is resilience,” said Seminoff, who specialises in sea turtles at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center. “Give them a chance to thrive and they will take advantage of it.”
Seminoff said the increasing numbers of sea turtles around the world also reflect a change in public values. Younger generations largely don’t see turtles as commodities, and former poachers in some places now lead tours to view nesting turtles as a part of ecotourism initiatives that provide alternative work for villagers.
People power
A new type of energy grid
by Aisling Cronin
A London-based renewable energy scheme is aiming to provide affordable, accessible power straight to the community in which it is based.
A company named Emergent Energy have teamed up with Hackney council in London to install 4,000 solar panels across three housing estates, which will generate one megawatt of power (about a fifth of those buildings’ energy needs).
Rooftop solar panels have existed on housing estates such as Frampton Park in the borough of Hackney for some time, but the power generated by these panels feed into the national grid. However, the new scheme will enable social housing tenants to benefit directly from the power generated on their rooftops, via newly regulated solar microgrids.
Hackney council’s Sarah Young commented that these microgrids could help make the borough more liveable for vulnerable residents. “One of the most important things for us is for this energy transition to be just,” she said.
It is estimated that this scheme will provide a 15% saving on energy bills for around 800 households.
“No one should miss out on the benefits of locally generated clean energy because of their income level or the type of home they live in,” said Reg Platt, founder and CEO of Emergent Energy. “That’s why we created this new opportunity for residents of social housing flats to receive savings on their energy bills from rooftop solar.”
According to Emergent, the initiative could easily be rolled out at other sites across the UK, and possibly provide a model for other countries to follow.
“Our approach is self-funding, as this ground-breaking project in Hackney will show, meaning we can deliver these benefits to potentially millions of residents without relying on government handouts,” added Platt.
