In today’s Good News, a conservationist in Nigeria teams up with the Apoi community to save a colorful monkey on the brink of extinction. And in another triumph for wildlife, an extraordinary tiger is once again roaming in Kazakhstan, with experts hoping this is the beginning of a fruitful new era for the animal.

Catherine Garcia
The Week Digital

In a U.S. first, surgeons in Houston successfully corrected an abdominal birth defect while the fetus was in the womb. Maisie Savage was 20 weeks into her pregnancy when she learned that her son, Theo, had gastroschisis, which causes the intestines to grow outside the body. The Londoner flew to Houston, where doctors used pioneering keyhole surgery techniques to push the intestines back in. Theo, now 5 months old, is the third baby to ever undergo the in utero procedure.

Global hunger rates fell for a third consecutive year, to 7.8% last year from 8.6% in 2022, the United Nations said in its annual State of Food Security and Nutrition report. Steady progress has been made across Asia, especially in India, due to rising agricultural productivity. While hunger remains severe in parts of Africa, the downward global trend marks significant progress since 1970, when almost 35% of people outside Europe and North America were undernourished.

A rare tiger has been released in Kazakhstan, ushering in what conservationists hope is a new era for wildlife. On July 31, a female amur tiger named Umit was relocated from eastern Russia to a nature reserve near Lake Balkhash. DNA analysis shows that amur tigers and extinct Caspian tigers — last spotted in Kazakhstan 70 years ago — are nearly identical. Umit’s arrival is a “truly historic event,” said Yerlan Nysanbayev, Kazakhstan’s environment minister. A male amur tiger is due to arrive in the country soon.

Nigerian conservationist Rachel Ikemeh is making great gains in her race to save the Niger Delta red colobus monkey. She launched the South-West/Niger Delta Forest Project in 2012 to protect the monkeys, whose wild populations were nearly decimated. Ikemeh began working with the local Apoi community to boost conservation efforts and protect the red colobus. Today they protect 2,500 acres of forest, she told CNN, and there are four “thriving” groups of monkeys repopulating the area.

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