This week we hit a series of worrying environmental news. A WWF report estimated that since 1970, humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations globally, and the world’s wildernesses are rapidly contracting under our influence, with only five now containing most of the world’s remaining untouched wild spaces. What’s more, fish may have the capacity to feel pain.

But there is always an upside to be found. Conservationists are doing remarkable work to save species from extinction, as Tony Carnie in Durban found out, though it remains to be seen whether humankind is better at saving endangered species than it is at killing them off.

The minute Pickersgill’s reed frogs, on the road to recovery. Photograph: Adrian Armstrong

In Barcelona, reporter Emma Reverter wrote on how local communities are working together to save greyhounds from execution after the end of the hunting season. Up to 2,000 galgos are now saved each year and these once unloved dogs have since become fashionable to adopt, not only in Spain but in the US and beyond.

We showed greyhounds as they really are – elegant and beautiful.” Klea Levin

The move towards more responsible meat-eating appears to be gathering pace meanwhile. A Waitrose report found that a third of Britons have stopped or reduced eating meat, with one in eight being either vegetarian or vegan.

What we liked

The New York Times reported on the open-door policy for refugees in Uganda, which is now home to more than 400,000 – the second piece of more positive news in as many months for uprooted people in Africa after our work from Guinea-Bissau.

With the US midterm elections fast approaching, it’s not all grim reading: the Idaho candidate Paulette Jordan is on track to possibly become the country’s first Native American governor, joining the record-breaking number of women – and women of colour – on the ballot this year.

What we heard

Let’s hope it’s not about to croak its last.” A reader punning on our Durban frog story

A new age of global hunger is becoming less likely.” George Monbiot writing in his column on the future of ‘electric food’

Dear Guardian. What a good idea! Proactive, practical, solution focused while still an interesting read. This helps counteract the negative bias I see in the media all too often. Ciara Dawson, via email

Where was the Upside?

A new journalistic collaborative called Are We Europe is weighing in on European themes, starting with this impressive piece of work on the Moldovans who refuse to give up on their country.

Elsewhere, a new documentary tells the unlikely story of the Glaswegian Rolls-Royce factory workers who refused to repair Chilean dictator Pinochet’s fighter jets in the 1970s. “I was about as interested in anything to do with Rolls-Royce as I was in the location of my last shite,” says one of the surviving workers. A defiant quote if ever there was one.

A message of thanks in Glasgow, 1982. Photograph: Debasers Filums

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