Every few years, the elders of Muluk, a tiny coastal community in Papua New Guinea, close a stretch of their reef to fishing. They do this to give these underwater gardens room to breathe, grow and replenish.

We first stumbled on this community-led approach back in 2001. These reefs appeared to be faring remarkably well compared to those further down the coast. This piqued our interest and led us to conduct a global search for other reef ecosystems that were seemingly defying the odds.

While collecting data from nearly 1,700 reefs worldwide, we found over a dozen more sites that had way more fish than expected. These reefs are examples of “bright spots” – places where nature is exceeding expectations given their environmental and social pressures, such as overfishing, habitat destruction, and climate change.

So what are bright spots and why do they matter for conservation? Our new study offers some answers.

Bright spots may seem like lucky exceptions to the otherwise bleak rule of ecological decline. We are, after all, living through a sixth global mass extinction of our own making. Today, the risk of plants and animals going extinct is hundreds of times higher than before humans roamed the earth.

Against this depressing backdrop, conservationists have mostly focused on failure: identifying urgent........

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