Endangered rhinos are now being protected by powerful data analytics

San Francisco’s chronically homeless population remains staggeringly high. Salt Lake City has managed to eradicate much of their chronically homeless by geographically placing supportive housing distant from the city’s center and receiving financial assistance from the Mormon Church. The housing is attractive, modern, and offers a good ratio between counselors and homeless clients—all of which helps make the homeless want to stay off the streets.

To address the food insecurity problem among its low-income students, Columbia University launched Swipes, a meal sharing app in which students with a surplus of “meal swipes” could donate them to students in need. But when that app struggled to function and roll out properly, Columbia looked downtown to New York University, where student Jon Chin launched a similarly purposed but more effectively designed app, Share Meals. So far, the app has enabled over a thousand meal donations, and is hoping to work with Columbia to share its code and expand its donor services.

Traditionally, whales have been studied through research vessels, which are hard to maneuver, and costly to make. However, drones with the ability to capture a whale’s snot, are providing a much easier, and cheaper alternative to whale research.

The poaching of rhinos in South Africa has seen a rapid increase since 2007, jumping from 13 deaths then to 1,215 in 2014. After concluding that guns alone were not the solution, a patrol of local women from impoverished areas were brought together in the Balule reserve to focus on efforts in removing snares, stopping bushmeat kitchens, setting up roadblocks and implementing educational opportunities in poor communities and schools. Since their start, the area has seen a 76% reduction in snaring and poaching incidents.

Some South African ranchers who raise rhinos legally are advocating for a block-chain currency "Rhino Coin." They argue that secure stockpiles of rhino horn could generate much needed funding for wild populations. But the plan is fiercely opposed by many conservation groups, and its success depends on whether or not a global ban on trading horn ends.

The Kansas City school district and a group of local nonprofits are implementing a new software management system that will allow partners to access student data from a range of sources. The data-sharing agreement will paint a more holistic picture of students and, in the future, allow teachers and others to make informed interventions when appropriate.

At a decommissioned chemical depot, a lone biologist has been building artificial homes for burrowing owls. To date, he's installed some 182 burrows. Not only have his efforts helped bring a declining species back across the region, but his studies have gone a long way to better understanding the birds.

The National Education Association has launched a school-focused COVID-19 case tracker in the U.S., all thank to the efforts of a Kansas theater teacher. Alisha Morris started with an excel sheet and took to online searches to start logging the number of positive cases, first around her state, and later was tracking 48 U.S. states. By the time she handed off the data to the NEA, Morris, along with various volunteers "had logged over nearly 4,300 cases at more than 1,000 schools."

Local Ocean Conservation is in Watamu, Kenya has made approximately 21,000 turtle rescues and "treated more than 650 turtles in its rehabilitation center and clinic" since it's inception in 1997. The group responds to fishermen who have accidentally caught turtles in their nets and then remunerates the fishermen for their "time, effort, and phone calls." This incentive-based relationship combined with a ban on the international tortoiseshell trade has helped decrease the poaching of turles, and the group has now expanded their efforts to include more initiatives to protect the endangered species.

A cheetah conservation project in South Africa has helped the cat population rebound over the years by securing them in wildlife reserves. The Cheetah Metapopulation Project started in 2011 when there were 217 cheetahs, but a decade later, there are now 419 across the reserves. While there is debate about whether the focus should be on the quantity of cheetahs or the quality of their enclosures, the project has been successful and they’re looking to share their cheetahs and conservation lessons with other countries.