It was one of the hardest weeks in Michelle Burleson’s life. Her beloved 13-year-old dog, Budgie Lou, just died. There seemed to be nothing in the world that could reduce her pain until she heard a faint (微弱的) knocking on her door.

“When I heard the knock, I opened my back door, but saw nothing until I looked down to see a skinny little squirrel looking up at me”, Burleson told The Dodo.

“I noticed the squirrel was thin, so I found a handful of nuts and threw them on the patio (露台).”

She assumed that would be the end of it, but that same evening the squirrel returned. The frightened animal ran away when Burleson tried to approach her. But it didn’t take long for the two to establish a routine(常规).

“She showed up the next morning at sunrise and again at sundown, like clockwork every day,” Burleson said. “Her daily visits gave me something to look forward to.” Burleson named the squirrel Stymie. “We slowly started trusting each other more and more,” Burleson said. “At first, I was scared she might bite me or something, but she was always very gentle.”

Stymie began treating Burleson’s home as if it were her own, drinking out of Burleson’s old dog bowl and sleeping in the dog bed. “I lived at the beach so I would often leave the door open, but when I didn’t, she’d climb up to knock on the window outside my bedroom,” Burleson said. “There’s no way I would’ve felt better without Stymie showing up one day and putting a little joy back in my life.”

The little squirrel probably has no idea that she changed someone’s life forever. “She was a really great friend at one of the lowest points of my life,” Burleson said. “All I know is that animals are the best.”

Climate activist Henry Emson told Euronews that when he became a father seven years ago, he was worried about his family’s effect on the environment. After doing some research, he found the best way to eliminate their carbon footprint was by planting giant sequoia trees(巨型红杉树).

Giant sequoias are ideal for capturing carbon dioxide because they continue to grow consistently for centuries, storing CO2 over time. General Sherman, the world’s largest sequoia tree, has stored an estimated 1,500 tons of CO2 in its trunk over the last 2,200 years and could live another 800 years. The average human could generate close to 1,000 tons of CO2 over their lifetime, so planting one giant sequoia could effectively reduce the carbon footprint of more than one person.

After realizing the power giant sequoias have to fight climate change, Emson devoted his life to planting thousands in the UK by creating the One Life One Tree project. Its final goal is to plant 100,000 giant sequoias in the UK by 2030, and according to The Mirror, as of March 2022, it has already planted 700. Trees are currently being planted near Abergavenny in Wales and the project is expanding to Devon, the Lake District and Scotland.

While the common assumption is that these giant trees can only be grown in Northern California, they actually do well in the UK at a time when the sequoia population is threatened back home.

According to One Tree One Life, 95% of the old-growth sequoia population has been logged over the past two centuries and what remains is under threat from climate change. “A 10 year＋ drought and temperature increase have greatly damaged the health of the trees. A secondary impact of the drought is making them increasingly susceptible(易受影响的)to insect attack and fire,” the site says.

Considering the danger that climate change is causing giant sequoias in California, Emson’s work also benefits these trees. “They’re like climate refugees(难民)—we help them with assisted migration,” he told Euronews.

Once there were many thousands of Gourma Desert (沙漠) elephants in Mali, a country in West Africa. Now, there are fewer than four hundred.

Why did the number of the elephants drop so quickly? On the one hand, the elephants’ main lake, their only water source (来源), dried up. On the other hand, the land which the elephants lived on was overused by humans.

To protect the elephants’ living environment, the Mali Elephant Project (MEP) was started in 2007. MEP met with local people and helped them make rules of using land and water. As a result, the situation became better and there was more food, forest and grassland.

However, from 2012 to 2016, poaching (偷猎) and illegal trade in the elephants increased rapidly. Eighty-three elephants were lost in 2015 alone, and another fifty-one elephant were killed in 2016. “If this situation goes on, all the Gourma elephants will be killed by 2020,” said a member of MEP.

Luckily, the voice of MEP was heard. More organizations (组织) have joined together to educate the local people that trading elephants is against the law. Elephant poaching has dropped to a very low level. The local people have learned to live peacefully with the elephants, one of the wildlife treasures in the world.